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Tag: Capitalism

  • Kim Kardashian Makes No Apology For Using Climate Change As Part of Her Method for Selling More Shit That Will Contribute to Climate Change

    Kim Kardashian Makes No Apology For Using Climate Change As Part of Her Method for Selling More Shit That Will Contribute to Climate Change

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    Even though October is certainly the time to exhibit frights and horrors, perhaps nobody could have anticipated what Kim Kardashian had in store for Halloween. No stranger to the crass methods it takes to become a billionaire, the “star” has reached arguably a new low this year (apart from American Horror Story: Delicate) by promoting a particular product ahead of its release on October 31st. And while being a corporate slut is one of the “titles” she most proudly adheres to being, her latest shenanigan for promoting Skims takes the (probably gluten-free) cake with regard to grotesque and needless prostitution.

    The “ad” (or rather, filmed project designed to be posted on Instagram) in question begins at a computer in a beige office setting that throws it back to the days of corporate glory. Sitting in front of the desk is none other than a beigely dressed Kardashian, sporting, of course, her Skims nipple bra. But before our attention is drawn to that, Kim tonelessly lists off our current bleak reality: “The Earth’s temperature is getting hotter and hotter. The sea levels are rising. The ice sheets are shrinking [did she mean melting?].” She then looks right into the camera and says, “And I’m not a scientist.” Standing up from her chair, she then gets to the point of what this is really all about: selling a bra with built-in nipples. That’s right, Kim, like all unwavering capitalists, ultimately believes that the decimation of the environment and its resulting effects can still be commodifiable. And tragically, it can be—and is, as Kardashian shows us in real time with this absurd commercial. Its absurdity is part of her defense mechanism in still being able to “get away with doing it.” She can position it as “absurdist art.” Or “corporate surrealism.” That latter term being what Grimes used to describe it. You know, Grimes—that well-known supporter of billionaire and corporate overlords (mostly via having some spawns with Elon Musk). She was quick to repost Kardashian’s video with the caption, “This is god tier performance art. Corporate surrealism at its finest.”

    The only thing is: it’s not surreal at all. It’s only too real. More accurately, it’s capitalist realism. This idea that corporations don’t want their customers (walking dollar signs, as far as they’re concerned) to bother with trying to make a change that could prevent the irrevocable damage to Mother Nature that will eventually signal the endangerment of humankind. They want people, instead, to “adapt” and “get used to” the situation. The best way to do that is to poke fun at it. Be “light-hearted” about it. Because what could possibly make one’s heart lighter than the thought of a raging wildfire or hurricane or tornado coming for them?

    Mark Fisher highlighted this tactic for keeping big business booming years ago. Indeed, being “anti-capitalist” has been in fashion since the 90s, with the surge of Gen X angst reflected in the styles of grunge and alternative music. Which was swiftly co-opted by companies like the Gap and Starbucks for increased profit. So sure, anyone “with principles” can talk shit about capitalism and its damaging effects as a means to feel better about themselves. Like they’re not actually part of or contributing to the problem. Capitalist propaganda helps ensure that talking about is “enough.” For, as Fisher noted, “…anti-capitalism is widely disseminated in capitalism. Time after time, the villain in Hollywood films will turn out to be the ‘evil corporation.’ Far from undermining capitalist realism, this gestural anti-capitalism actually reinforces it.” Emphasis on gestural. Because no one is actually going to do something that would infer anything beyond the “symbolic.” That would mean losing profit. And the only thing a capitalist hates more than a socialist is losing profit.

    Kardashian exemplifies this “self-awareness” method in her ad. As though to say, “I know the Earth is crumbling, but you should still buy my product because we’re all doomed anyway.” Walking away from the desk, Kim continues (clearly thinking she’s the cleverest and funniest girl in the world), “I do believe everyone can use their skillset to do their part.” She then approaches a projection screen with a presentation pointer to declare, “That’s why I’m introducing a brand-new bra with a built-in nipple.”

    Naturally, a diagram-esque image of said bra is displayed on the screen. But Kim knows that nobody is really focusing on that, so much as the product itself that she’s already modeling. As though she’s just come up with the solution for climate change (which everyone already knows: stop using fucking fossil fuels), Kim then chirps, “So no matter how hot it is, you’ll always look cold.” She returns to the desk to lean back against it “sensually,” concluding, “Some days are hard, but…these nipples are harder. And unlike the icebergs, these aren’t going anywhere.”

    Being that Kim is no stranger to tone deafness (see: originally wanting to call Skims “Kimono,” North’s Friesian horses, her version of feeling “normal” during the pandemic, etc.), it wouldn’t be surprising if she genuinely had “no awareness” of the multi-layered effrontery provided by this little “PSA.” Not least of which is further normalizing the notion that people must simply learn to live with and “work around” the environment being fucked as a result of product shillers like her. And yeah, it’s very easy to be “blithe” about the whole thing in your advertising campaign when you know you have the privilege of money to insulate (no temperature pun intended) you from the inevitable fallout of climate change. But sooner or later, even the rich might find that money can’t buy them out of their environmental comeuppance.

    Oh and, by the way, Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) from Sex and the City was already pushing the “built-in” nipple trend in 2001, telling her trio of friends in “Baby, Talk Is Cheap,” “Nipples are huge right now. Open any magazine—it’s not that cold. They’re either tweaking or they’re wearing these.” She then holds up two small rubber nipples that she says someone sent her as a “promotional thing.” Clearly, not Kim Kardashian, who was still relegated to obscurity at the time, having just finished a stint working at an Encino clothing store called Body. But maybe she caught that SATC episode in 2001, and was “subliminally” inspired. One thing about the SATC nipples though: they take a lot less materials and packaging to manufacture and sell. But, obviously, Kardashian assuages any such concern for that/insists you can pat yourself on the back for being a consumer by including in her caption, “Skims is proud to donate ten percent of sales from our Skims Ultimate Nipple Bra, as a one-time donation [ha! one time] to @1percentftp—a global network with thousands of businesses and environmental organizations working together to support people and the planet.” To use a Valley girl phrase from someone who might shop at an Encino clothing store, “I’m so sure.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Capitalism Goes Ultra Cringe With Just Eat’s Menulog Commercial Starring Christina Aguilera and Latto

    Capitalism Goes Ultra Cringe With Just Eat’s Menulog Commercial Starring Christina Aguilera and Latto

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    For a moment there, it seemed as though everyone was quite quick to bill Christina Aguilera as the “classier” of the two 00s icons of pop stardom, with Britney Spears long ago billed as an “inbred swamp thing” (namely, in a 2007 Rolling Stone cover story). But now, all that “good faith” has officially gone to pot. An appropriate food-related idiom in this case as Aguilera has taken to shilling for Just Eat’s recently-acquired Australian outfit, Menulog. And, although she’s not alone in the endeavor (joined by Latto on rap vocals), something about her stooping to this level is more unexpected than it is from Latto. Some will probably read that as having racist undertones, but no, it’s more about the fact that rapping women of Latto’s generation, including Cardi B (who has plugged everything from Pepsi to Balenciaga) and Ice Spice (currently shilling for Dunkin’ Donuts), have never known an existence in which debasing oneself for money via over-the-top advertising endorsements wasn’t the norm. 

    To be sure, this has been happening since brands and celebrities long ago unearthed the financial possibilities of their collaborative partnerships but it seemed that, once upon a time, there was a touch more tact to these “synergies.” Even in Aguilera’s “heyday,” circa 1999 to 2006, there was a less schlock-y feel than what she’s just put out into the world with Latto. This could, in part, have to do with print ads being more viable back then, allowing celebrities to say more by saying nothing at all. Just sporting the wares. Of course, in Menulog’s instance, food can’t exactly be sported (unless we’re talking that quintessential scene from Varsity Blues). And so, instead, Aguilera and Latto opt to sing passionately about the many possibilities of the app when it comes to ordering food. 

    Not least of which includes, per Latto’s rap, “Oh you thought it was just burgers and fries?/They got more flavors than you tasted or you heard in your life.” Already, with the implication that flavors can be “heard,” it’s clear that “sensicality” isn’t exactly what matters. Not in this commercial, and certainly not in life. After all, if life made sense, those with greater privilege wouldn’t abuse those given little other choice but to do a job so abusive and low-paying (especially considering said abuse) as delivering slop for Menulog. 

    Aguilera is no stranger to the advertising game, of course. In 2003, she followed in Spears’ footsteps by promoting Skechers in a series of print ads (this after Spears had parted ways with Skechers, effectively making Christina Aguilera “sloppy seconds”). Then there have been her more recent ventures, including becoming a spokesperson for Playground (a sexual wellness brand) and Merz Aesthetics. The latter company had Aguilera focusing on the promotion of Xeomin, an injectable intended to reduce between-the-eyebrow-centered frown lines. Ironically, the campaign was called “Beauty On Your Terms.” Of course, if beauty were on anyone’s terms except the patriarchy’s, women wouldn’t be worrying so goddamn much about frown lines, and, in effect, might actually not have as many to try to hide.

    At present, Aguilera appears to want to assure that people can “just eat” on their own terms as well. Even if Latto is doing most of the heavy lifting on the lyrical delivery, further assuring viewers, “Ooh, this is what the app do/It ain’t only fast food/Switchin’ styles like opera to rap tunes.” As for that mention of “opera,” this is where both Aguilera and the setting of the commercial itself come in. Presenting a world of “opulence” as both Latto and Aguilera appear in a Versailles-type palace wearing Marie Antoinette-inspired gowns. Because, evidently, when you order from Menulog, it makes you feel like a queen. Or such is the intended seduction of this capitalistic endeavor. One in which even food has to be weaponized as a “status symbol.” 

    That said, in every scenario where status is involved, someone has to play the part of “lowly servant” in order to make the bourgeoisie feel like they’re in their “higher echelon.” So it is that, whether realizing it or not, the creative team behind the commercial, directed by Dave Meyers, has effectively pitted the haves and have-nots against each other by featuring orange uniform-wearing (perhaps an unwitting nod to how work feels like a prison) delivery folk dancing around Latto and Aguilera, ultimately in a servile position (which includes pushing Latto in a cart). The previous celebrity commercials for Just Eat’s “Did Somebody Say” (featuring Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry, respectively), predicated on the same concept, didn’t parade servility quite so overtly, but when a baroque premise is involved, perhaps it’s more difficult to mask the fact that some people are eating and some people are just hustling to get this bread.   

    Especially now that delivery has expanded into the grocery store market, which Latto is sure to call out in the lyrics, “And it ain’t only restaurants anymore/We can go bananas at the grocery store.” Even Australian grocery stores, as Menulog is the Just Eat-owned brand being pushed here. And maybe some part of Aguilera agreed to sign on in the hope that the U.S. wouldn’t bother with watching the widely-available ad (such is the curse of the internet rendering all content as viewable to anyone, no matter what country an ad is really being catered to). Latto doesn’t appear to have any sense of shame about doing what needs to be done to collect her paycheck as she continues to do most of the work while Aguilera “ehs” and “ahs” bombastically in the background. However, for most of the “song,” it feels like a solo effort, with Latto also adding, “I’m a bad girl, but my takeout badder/What you need dude? I could cop a taco platter/Thai rice, sticky-icky/Gyoza on the side, fried right ‘cause we kind picky.” As the scene then cuts to the Marie Antoinette-attired duo riding in a gondola through a stream bedecked on either side with fountains, Latto continues, “Breakfast or lunch, hon/Dinner or brunch/Wanna find the finest dining?/I got a hunch.” 

    We’re then taken back to the interior just after Aguilera softly sings, “And some hot tall dude’s bringing buns to the ballroom.” Heavy-handed sexual innuendo aside, this line also verbally calls out the visuals of servility we’ve seen already. Making it worse still as the rich fetishize the working class as something to be ogled while they work. Ergo, Latto building on that lyric right after by saying, “Got me a strong coffee/Let’s get it on, papi.” Unfortunately, for as harmlessly cracked-out as they thought the lyrics might be (including, “Ice cream with my magazine, who can stop me?”), it only ends up highlighting the chasm between those who work for Just Eat/Menulog and those who order from it. Never mind the fact that those who order from the app are laboring under the false illusion of “luxury” anyway, what with a large portion of restaurants that Just Eat peddles on their website not exactly being fully up to the most hygienic of standards. So there’s that for sticking it to the bourgeoisie, essentially paying to having it “stuck” to them. 

    As for the seeming “randomness” of tapping Aguilera and Latto for this ad, the entire concept of wielding celebrities to promote Just Eat also speaks to the blueprint of what Bonnie Fuller (the former editor-in-chief of Us Weekly) came up with via the magazine segment known as “Stars: They’re Just Like Us.” In the end, the hoi polloi wants to be reassured, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they’re not the only ones “relegated” to using something as middle-class as Just Eat. And the trick seems to have worked, with positive feedback in the comments section touting, “We want an extended single version of this! Christina sounds incredible and Latto is fire” and “This NEEDS to be a single!!!!”

    Does it though? Because it’s rather superfluous to try to pass of the ad as anything other than another cringeworthy hurrah for capitalism (and its place within the celebrity-industrial complex). Aguilera didn’t get that message at all. For, soon after the commercial aired, she took to her Instagram to post a behind-the-scenes video of her and Latto on set, choosing “Can’t Hold Us Down” featuring Lil’ Kim to soundtrack it. Apart from the slightly racist implications of selecting one of her only songs featuring a Black woman to play up working with another female rapper in the present, Aguilera further insulted people’s intelligence by captioning it, “This is for the girls” (a nod to the chorus of “Can’t Hold Us Down”). Like, really, Xtina? Is a commercial about food delivery “for the girls”? Is this the best the feminist movement can do? Level the playing field for women to be as obsessed with “filling their bag” as men? If that’s the case, might as well get back in the kitchen. No need for ordering delivery then. 

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • When Carrie Bradshaw Shamed Women With “Free Time,” Or: In Defense of Charlotte York’s “Retro” Decision to Not Work 

    When Carrie Bradshaw Shamed Women With “Free Time,” Or: In Defense of Charlotte York’s “Retro” Decision to Not Work 

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    Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), who has hardly ever been what one might call a “women’s advocate” (see: defending sexually predatory behavior), once famously shamed Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) for willingly becoming one of those women. You know, the ones who have the kind of free time for self-enrichment that allows them to take pottery classes in the middle of the day. Well, not a class, per se, so much as a jaunt into Color Me Mine, a real place that probably reached its pinnacle around the same time the episode in question, “Time and Punishment,” first aired in 2001. Because this was also the height of the Petroglyph era in California. Commercializing and mass-marketing pottery and ceramics classes perhaps in an avant-garde bid to teach something like mindfulness in an evermore mercilessly capitalistic world…long before the pandemic forced (some) people to slow down and reflect. The irony being, of course, that you still have to pay to be “mindful.”

    In fact, that’s precisely what Charlotte wants to do with her newfound freedom when she quits the gallery in season four: glaze a motherfuckin’ pot at Color Me Mine. But, to Carrie, that’s deemed somehow frivolous, purposeless and, for some reason, not “artistic” enough. It seems, however, that part of the reason Carrie exhibits such judgment about it (granted, as she does about many things) is because it probably hits too close to home. This idea that if you’re not working a “real job” that comes complete with an office space or “stationing” within some kind of edifice beyond your own abode, then you’re not actually working (which means, technically, going to Color Me Mine should count as a job). For Carrie, deep down, must have felt some level of “pinch me” guilt for being able to translate her sexual exploits/party girl ways into something like a regular paycheck (though, as it has been pointed out many times, certainly not the kind of regular paycheck that could afford Carrie her haute couture-drenched manner of living). 

    Because yes, many a “single gal” before and after her has tried to do the same (and do it better), only to be met with no such financially tantalizing offers for detailing their “rock n’ roll lifestyle.” Thus, perhaps mocking Charlotte for wanting to become a woman who glazes and lazes is a reflection of the underlying belief that “being a layabout” posing as an artist is, in actuality, what Carrie is doing too. That is, in her role as a “writer” a.k.a. sex columnist. Because even the most “legitimate” (whatever that really means) of writers struggle frequently with severe bouts of impostor syndrome. Especially ones who are entirely dependent on the lives of others for their “inspiration” (read: material). Which Carrie very much is, what with her vanilla predilections in the boudoir. Shit, even Charlotte comes across as more adventurous in the long run, almost becoming a rug muncher before Samantha in season two’s “The Cheating Curve” and kissing the hot gardener as a married woman in season three’s “What Goes Around Comes Around.” Carrie would never (mainly because she’s more classist than she lets on). And, obviously, Samantha is the primary source of fodder for Carrie’s column drawing so many eyes (or rather, so many eyes for a local rag). 

    Yet even Samantha, for all her “progressiveness,” gives Charlotte flak for her announcement, assuming, “Did you get a better offer from another gallery?” and, later in the conversation, “Well, be damn sure before you get off the Ferris wheel because the women waiting to get on are twenty-two, perky and ruthless.” As for Carrie, her thinly-veiled harsh words come in the form of, “Sweetie, if I was walking by [Color Me Mine] and I saw you in there, I’d just keep on walking.” The implication being that, unlike Charlotte, she sees no “nobility” or “value” in art for art’s sake. Or doing anything, really, that doesn’t have some specific “purpose” (even fucking has a purpose for Carrie: her column). This being such a New York outlook on life that it practically makes one want to vomit over how many people living in that city share such a view. In contrast, Charlotte previously tells her friends of spotting a so-called deadbeat/kept/unemployed woman, “Sometimes I’ll walk by one of those Color Me Mine pottery places and I’ll see a woman having just a lovely afternoon glazing a bowl.” 

    When Charlotte is met with nothing but crickets and blank stares, she feels the need to further justify “not working” (this phrase always designed to diminish the things one does and actually enjoys doing for no money). To do so, she also assures them, “And I wanted to volunteer at Trey’s hospital. And help raise money for the new pediatric AIDS wing.” Upon hearing that, Carrie “indulges” her friend’s “whim” by encouraging, “The cooking and the AIDS stuff is great…” only to gut-punch Charlotte with the aforementioned insult about “just keeping on walking” if she saw Charlotte glazing a bowl at midday. 

    Of course, that’s just called jealousy. For all working people are fundamentally derisive and judgmental toward those who “don’t work” (a.k.a. are just doing things that make them happy without placing a monetary value on it). Wishing they, too, could live such an unburdened, unbrainwashed life. But even Charlotte can’t deprogram from the idea that she has to be “useful” in some alternate fashion, like child-birthing. Continuing a new generation of Worker Soldiers who will also believe in the religion of Capitalism. Whether they’re forced to (by circumstance of birth) or not (also by circumstance of birth).

    Oddly, though, Charlotte chooses to take out Carrie’s judgment on Miranda by calling her the next morning and saying, “You were so judgmental at the coffee shop yesterday. You think I’m one of those women.” Genuinely confused, Miranda asks, “One of what women?” Charlotte snaps back, “One of those women we hate, who just works until she gets married.” The guilt over being “indulgent” enough to quit her job and take a risk on pursuing something less “directed” than working as an art curator/dealer has clearly gotten to her. And it’s not because she herself is questioning the “choice she chooses,” but because the lack of support from her friends, to her, signifies the lack of societal support for any woman who would dare to quit working. This, in effect, shows how far capitalism—not feminism—has come in indoctrinating people of all genders to believe that their primary value is in the amount of money they can bring home. So while Sex and the City disguises this as a mark of how the tables have turned on homemakers being the “freaks” instead of the working girls, it’s actually more telling of how women have been as subsumed by capitalism as men. Entirely taken with its seductive tenets, the top of the list being “independence.” By becoming a slave to whoever employs and underpays you. 

    At the end of “Time and Punishment,” Charlotte remains slightly ambivalent about her decision, snapping at the girl she’s hired to take over for her by barbing, “You’re twenty-two, what do you know about life?” Realizing her temper got away from her, she apologizes and explains, “I’ve been working my whole life, this is a big transition.” The twenty-two-year-old replacing her finally justifies her action by remarking, “If it’s any consolation, my mother worked all the time. It would have been nice to have her home.” Nonetheless, when Charlotte first told her replacement she was quitting to focus on motherhood, the girl looked at her with just as much horrified incredulity as Carrie (who, again, was way more judgmental than Miranda, despite the episode quickly centering the yin and yang “rivalry” between single women who work and married women who don’t on Miranda and Charlotte). So it is that Charlotte adds, yet again, her claim of being very focused on pediatric AIDS research. Because a social cause is better than no cause at all…if you have to confess to “not working.” A phrase that, to reiterate, not only belittles artists, but also domestic labor that is billed as somehow “lesser than” the non-“pink collar” jobs of this money-grubbing world. 

    And yet, what Charlotte ultimately proves by walking out of the job anyway, despite all the glares lobbied against her, is that nothing “tastes” as good as “not working” feels. Plus, it makes capitalists so very uncomfortable, something they ought to experience far more often than they’re made to. The dichotomy being that Charlotte has the luxury of being the most anti-capitalist of her friend group perhaps precisely because she’s benefited the most from capitalism via her inherited wealth.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “9 to 5” With An Edge (That Is To Say, “Mexican Style”): Shakira Sticks It to The Man in “El Jefe” Featuring Fuerza Regida

    “9 to 5” With An Edge (That Is To Say, “Mexican Style”): Shakira Sticks It to The Man in “El Jefe” Featuring Fuerza Regida

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    Inaugurating, however briefly, her regional Mexican music era, Shakira brings us yet another single designed to prepare us for her long-awaited twelfth album. And yet, if Shakira has conditioned us to understand one thing about her, it’s to expect the unexpected in whatever musical route she decides to take. Because who knew something like a corrido would be next in her wheelhouse. At the same time, after such varied-in-style hits as “Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” “TQG,” “Acróstico” and “Copa Vacía” earlier this year, nothing Shakira releases should come as a surprise. The only real shock being if she didn’t manage to release a bop…or a song that didn’t feature someone else on it (in this case, Mexican group Fuerza Regida). And this one not only delivers on that front, but also, let’s call it, the People’s Liberation Front (no relation to the organization named as such in countries such as Sri Lanka and Ethiopia). And, yes, like Beyoncé’s anti-work anthem, “Break My Soul,” Shakira is also coming from a place of having never really worked the kind of soul-breaking job she refers to in “El Jefe,” yet still does her best to sound as though she has (hence, the need for co-writers Edgar Barrera, Kevyn Cruz and Manuel Lorente). 

    But, in contrast to her erstwhile collaborator, Bey, Shakira is far more aggressive in her contempt for thankless, underpaid jobs and the overpaid fat cats who make work so unbearable for the other ninety-nine percent. Because she doesn’t sing a passing verse like, “And I just quit my job I’m gonna find new drive/Damn, they work me so damn hard/Work by nine, then off past five/And they work my nerves/That’s why I cannot sleep at night.” No, instead, the entire song is about work being a fucking scam/joke for anyone who isn’t in a position of power (usually as a result of birth lottery circumstances). And, talking of the nine to five schedule (increasingly outmoded at this juncture), Shakira officially outdoes the anti-The Man anthem that is Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.” That’s right, it only took forty-three years for something as oppressor-despising (hidden behind a “jaunty” tone and rhythm) to come along. 

    What’s more, “El Jefe” mimics the narrative structure of “9 to 5” in terms of laying out all the rightful complaints from the beginning of the day. From the very moment one opens their eyes to the sound of the alarm that might as well be a death (of the soul) knell. So it is that Shakira opens “El Jefe” with lyrics that translate to: “7:30 the alarm has gone off/I want to be in bed/But it cannot be done/I take the kids at 9/The same coffee, the same kitchen/The same always, the same routine/Another shitty day/Another day at the office.” In 1980, Parton phrased that opening as, “Tumble out of bed/And stumble to the kitchen/Pour myself a cup of ambition/And yawn and stretch and try to come to life…/Out on the streets, the traffic starts jumpin’/For folks like me on the job from 9 to 5.”

    Parton then serves up the iconic chorus, “Workin’ 9 to 5/What a way to make a livin’/Barely gettin’ by/It’s all takin’ and no givin’/They just use your mind/And they never give you credit.” Shakira feels much the same as she sings, “I have a shitty boss who doesn’t pay me well/I arrive walking/And he in a Mercedes-Benz [again, Dolly correlation]/He has me as a recruit/The son of a bitch/You’re dreaming of leaving the neighborhood/You have everything to be a millionaire/Expensive tastes, the mentality/You only need the salary.”

    In the accompanying video, Shakira plays up the regional Mexican tone with a Texana aesthetic that comes complete with cowboy hat, cowboy boots, leather fringe skirt, bombastic belt and some zapateado stylings intermixed with her own renowned “hip work.” Directed by Jora Frantzis, who has already dabbled with Latina mamis in the past (i.e., directing videos for Jennifer Lopez and Cardi B), scenes of Shakira on a horse that taps its hooves to the beat (something that deserves a visual effects award because that can’t be real) are quickly interspersed with scenes of immigrants on a train making their way, presumably, to the U.S. border. Where, as Shakira describes, they’ll be met with working conditions that can best be described as glorified slavery. No wonder she’s quick to urge, “Stick it to the man” in between scenes of warehouse workers (played by Fuerza Regida members) carrying too many boxes on their shoulders (perhaps a dig at Amazon, as famed for its “low” prices as it is for never giving warehouse pickers a bathroom break). 

    Soon, we see Shakira and Fuerza Regida joining the other aspiring Americans on the back of a boxcar as Shakira continues to speak on her rage regarding racial and class inequality (for the former is directly related to the latter, particularly in “anyone can be anything” America). Shakira, too, seems well-versed in the fact that it’s just as Dolly said: “It’s a rich man’s game/No matter what they call it/And you spend your life/Putting money in his wallet.” Ergo, “What irony, what madness/This is torture/You kill yourself from dawn to dusk and you don’t even have a writing.” That last word a botched translation from “escritura,” which can also mean a deed (as in: to property) or a “document”/“papers” (as in: the legal “right” to be somewhere).

    For good measure, Shakira also adds another dig at Gerard Piqué by calling out his father with the insult, “They say there is no evil/That lasts more than a hundred years/But there is still my ex father-in-law who has not set foot in the grave.” So much for a temporary peace between the two exes (yet perhaps it’s only fair considering Shakira took aim earlier this year at her ex mother-in-law through a carefully-curated witch display). But this song has nothing to do with getting revenge on an ex (unless it’s an ex-boss). No, it’s all in service of buttressing the proletariat…or at least comforting them by assuring that someone is very aware of what they’re going through (even if from their own perch on Millionaires’ Row). 

    Which is why, at the one-minute, forty-four-second mark of the video, things take a turn toward the indoors, with Frantzis focusing on the fat cats (literally fat, obviously) themselves as they sit at a banquet table. And what’s on the menu? Why, the proletariat, of course! A.k.a. Jesus Ortiz Paz’s (Fuerza Regida’s lead singer) head on a platter, John the Baptist-style. What the fat cats hadn’t bargained for (just as Franklin Hart hadn’t bargained for Violet, Doralee or Judy), however, was a calmly irate Shakira showing up to walk on their table and approach the so-called “jefe” at the head of it with an expression that says, “I’m the jefe now, bitch.”

    As for the mention of her former-turned-current nanny, Lili Melgar, by declaring, “This song’s for you/They didn’t pay you compensation,” well, that’s another direct hit at Piqué. Who apparently fired Melgar after she tipped Shakira off to a “third presence” visiting their house all the time before she finally clocked the suspiciously diminished contents of the jam jar. 

    The last shot in the video returns to a defiant-looking Shakira (dressed in her all-red cowgirl ensemble—because, sooner or later, the oppressed becomes the oppressor, right?) on her horse as she stares into the camera. As though daring the jefes of the world to try to keep her or her “kind” down. But, no matter who you are or where you’re from (to paraphrase the Backstreet Boys), there is always common ground to be had in the shared experience of how much work blows chunks (at pretty much any pay grade, to boot). 

    For even the white men known as Blink-182 once said, “Work sucks, I know.” And so does Shakira. Or at least she can “get into the headspace” of knowing, if “El Jefe” is any indication. Thus, the only thing that could be more triumphant than this anti-work anthem is an official mashup (à la “Numb/Encore”) of it with “9 to 5.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Beanie Bubble Reminds That The Ultimate Childhood Toy for Millennials Was Also the Ultimate Representation of What It Is to Be Millennial

    The Beanie Bubble Reminds That The Ultimate Childhood Toy for Millennials Was Also the Ultimate Representation of What It Is to Be Millennial

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    Perhaps what strikes one the most about The Beanie Bubble isn’t pulling back the curtain behind the “Wizard of Beanie Babies,” Ty Warner, and finding out he was a huge asshole, but rather, the realization of just how millennial the plush toys really were. This doesn’t pertain to the actual era during which they came out, so much as the “toys” being a reflection of what it already meant to be millennial, even (/especially) at tender preteen ages. The fact that even something as theoretically pure as “toys” suddenly had to be slapped with the purpose of “getting a return on one’s investment” couldn’t be more millennial by nature. Having the thing for the sake of having it simply wasn’t an option. It had to “give something back.” Just as millennial children were expected to. And yes, as Malcolm Harris notes in Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials, this was the first generation of children treated this way. As human capital.

    Look to none other than their baby boomer parents for a large part of that reason. The parents who wanted to ensure that their children had nothing but the best and never endured any amount of previously unavoidable pain whatsoever (hence, helicopter parenting). Their childhoods were going to be different. Safer. No playing outside for hours at a time until dinner. No, no. Now, that time had to be accounted for. Monitored. Monetizable (at least somewhere down the line).

    And there’s always more time for self-improvement over “useless” play. This factoring into why Beanie Babies certainly shouldn’t be viewed as actual toys to play with. Gasp! That was a scandalous thought after realizing they were actually laden with value. At times, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of value. So it is that the book The Beanie Bubble is based on, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute (written by none other than a millennial), reminds that it “had turned into a craze that was the twentieth-century American version of the tulip bubble in 1630s Holland.” It, too, was described as a “mania.” Tulip mania.

    To that end, the precursor to The Beanie Bubble, a 2021 documentary called Beanie Mania, highlights the ways in which boomer parents took something theoretically innocent and fun, and then turned it into something that more closely resembled a chore, an obligation. A means to secure one’s future. In said documentary, a former Beanie-loving child named Michelle makes that apparent when she says, “…it became a multiple trip, do what we can, keep going until you were tired, until there were no other stores in the area that might have what we’re looking for. And then my mom took that to an extreme and it quickly became her thing over mine.”

    The obsession, on the parents’ part, with collecting as many Beanies as possible ultimately had more to do with “winning” at toy-owning/ensuring their child had the best of everything, than it did with “having fun.” For nothing about being a millennial child was ever about just having fun. All of it had to be in service for some “greater purpose.” Some higher aim in service of the competition called life. Something, in the end, that would create a “market bubble” among the buying and selling of millennials themselves. For if every millennial was trained in the same proverbial school of “Be the Best,” it creates a greater likelihood for children (and the adults they become) to be rejected by the various institutions that know “everyone” is both the crème de la crème and willing to work at maximum capacity for minimal payment. That’s what they learned in school, after all. Where “the pedagogical mask,” as Harris refers to it, is meant to conceal that what the children are actually doing is training for a life of unpaid labor (with such labor eventually billed as “just part of the job”), the great Beanie Baby race was a study in how to turn a quick profit. All by asking of a child the one thing you never should: don’t play with your toys.

    What could be a more “reasonable” ask of a generation where competition over things that were formerly innocent had never been at a higher level? As Harris remarks over the retooled school structure of the 90s, “[It’s] built around hypercompetition, from first period, to extracurricular activities, to homework, to the video games kids play when they have a minute of downtime. It’s not a coincidence—none of it. The growth of growth requires lots of different kinds of hard work, and millennials are built for it.” Not just because they’ve been conditioned to expect putting in hours of work with little given back in return, but because they’re the first generation that was taught to always be “plugged in.” To the matrix, that is. Always available, therefore always ready for any opportunity that might arise. Like a higher bidding price on eBay. The famed auction site that aligned with the rise of the secondary market for Beanie Babies. A secondary market that served as a collector’s wet dream. And yes, the entire driving force behind the rise and popularity of Beanie Babies were the collectors. Originally just a group of “cul-de-sac moms” from Naperville, Illinois. Meaning that, perhaps for the only time in history, the Midwest was ahead of the trend curve before everyone else. 

    Dave Sobolewski, the middle child of one of the “original Beanie Ladies,” Mary Beth, himself comes across as a quintessential millennial, simply shrugging off the absurdity with his assessment of market bubbles while also finding the time to flex, “My background, my education, my profession, it’s all finance. Beanie Babies is a case study in just how a few people pushing an idea and enthusiasm…crazy things can happen.” Spoken like someone who has never reckoned with the traumatic experience of being a millennial. Manipulated for profit in much the same manner as Beanie Babies until millennials’ own bubble burst. Instead, Dave writes off the unhinged fanaticism as: “Without the few women that started the entire mania, Beanie Babies never would have been.” It bears mentioning, to be sure, that the women who started it were all white and middle-class, and many of them held formerly high-powered jobs before giving it up to be a “full-time mom” (as though you can’t be that regardless of having a paid job) in the cul-de-sac. Undoubtedly, it sounds a lot like the plot to The Stepford Wives. And maybe there was something “automaton-esque” about their obsession. More, more, more. Feed, feed, feed.

    All of this, in the end, being the philosophy that trickled down to their millennial children, who would not have the benefit of experiencing adulthood in an epoch that allowed for such ease of moneymaking as the boomers did. Ty Warner (played by Zach Galifianakis) himself being such an example of someone who continuously “fell into” money. In large part due to the women he surrounded himself with. Women who are finally given some credit in The Beanie Bubble, structured in an “all over the place” way (that many critics included in part of their panning) to show the different time periods in which Warner was most reliant on them. Patricia Roche was the first on Warner’s list of Women to Fuck Over. Helping him to establish the business, there’s no denying she was instrumental in the initial years of Ty Inc.’s success before Beanie Babies. In the movie, she becomes “Robbie Jones” (played by Elizabeth Banks), while Faith McGowan, his second serious girlfriend, becomes Sheila (Sarah Snook). But the woman he arguably took the most advantage of wasn’t even someone he was dating.

    Instead, it was college student Lina Trivedi, who worked there for twelve dollars an hour from 1992 to 1998 despite the fact that she was the direct cause of the many millions (then billions) of dollars the company would go on to make. In no small part because of her suggestion to implement the use of this thing called “The Internet.” In fact, Ty Inc. was surprisingly ahead of the game on the ways in which the internet could be used. From checking out product information to serving as a place for collectors to connect, Trivedi was the brainchild behind all of that. 

    And the boomers were ready to absorb the technology. This being what amplified and blew up Beanie Mania into pure frenzy. As Joni Hirsch-Blackman in Beanie Mania puts it, “It was a really nice thing for a while…till the adults ruined it.” At least some adults can admit that much. Though they can’t seem to admit that everything about Beanie Baby fever was fueled from a middle-class perspective, with no regard for what else was actually going on in the world (or the havoc they would ultimately wreak upon people’s lives by creating this speculative market). To that point, Joni also foolishly declares, “I think of the 90s as sort of frivolous.” From that skewed view (one that ignores things like the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, the first World Trade Center bombing attempt, the Unabomber, the rise of school shootings, etc.), it left room for the frivolousness of collecting (again, if you were white and middle-class).

    As the early days of trolling for Beanie Babies gave way to something far darker, Joni could admit that the taint was starting to settle in fast on what was once meant to be a child’s toy. However, as she remarks, “This was becoming something different. We don’t play with these things because they’re gonna be worth money. If the tag was creased, you’d ruin the value of your Beanie.” To reiterate, this is decidedly “millennial thinking.” Or rather, the thinking that millennials were inculcated with. Always search for the next hustle, the next scam, the next “get rich quick” scheme. All without seeming to realize that “legitimate” jobs require just as much time and effort as the so-called easy way out. Then, of course, there was all the waste that arose from the obsession with collecting. Not least of which was the McDonald’s collaboration that resulted in “Teenie Beanies,” prompting consumers to just throw away the food after buying excessive amounts of Happy Meals to complete their set. At the height of the fervor in 1998, various fights and thefts would break out at McDonald’s locations across the U.S., necessitating police involvement. The fixation on these bean-filled sacks shaped as animals being of high value meant that, suddenly, the market seemed to be filled solely with sellers. Sellers who were starting to get fed up with the secondary market when inventory wasn’t being unloaded so quickly, or for as much as it had in the past when the bubble started to burst around 1999. 

    Sensing the imminent doom, Warner pulled a stunt announcing Beanie Babies would be discontinued after December 31, 1999 (appropriate, considering their demise would be after the 90s ended anyway). Then, after a buying spike, he polled the collectors (by charging them to vote on the website) if they wanted Beanies to stay—after he had already ratcheted up the demand again in the wake of that “to be discontinued” announcement. This doesn’t make it into The Beanie Bubble, though what comes across overall is that there is no “genius” behind the curtain. In Beanie Mania, Ty even is referred to as the Wizard of Oz. An emperor with no clothes, as it were. Sure, he could be billed as the “eccentric heart” of the designs, but, in the end, he would have been nothing without the women behind him. This was a key element that writer Kristin Gore (that’s right, the daughter of 90s vice president, Al), wanted to convey. Co-directed with her husband, Damian Kulash, The Beanie Bubble does just that. And, although known to many as the lead singer for OK Go, Kulash seems uniquely qualified to co-direct the movie as he contributed a story to a book called Things I’ve Learnt from Women Who’ve Dumped Me. Would that Ty Warner had learned anything from the women who dumped him, least of all humility. And an understanding that his success was a direct result of the rigged system that continues to favor white men. 

    Per Gore on writing the script, “We’ve talked a lot about how there’s this myth of a lone male genius coming up with things. You see it over and over again, benefiting from a system that’s rigged for him and against everyone else. And we wanted to peel back those layers and look at that myth and really show what everyone knows, which is that there’s always so much more to that story. There are always so many more people involved.” In the case of the millennial mentality that insists, “Always be driven, always be competing…with the potential for no payout,” that, too, had many people involved. From the government to parents and, yes, to corporations like Ty Inc.

    What The Beanie Bubble also wants to remind people of is how ugly capitalism makes us. Which is why the film opens with that illustrious truck crash scene (which is, needless to say, hyper-stylized), wherein boxes of Beanies go flying and everyone on the highway starts picking at the remains like vultures. In Beanie Mania, Mary Beth blithely sums a scene like this up with, “The collector’s mentality is that you can never have enough.” But the sentence Mary Beth was really looking for was: “The American consumer’s mentality is that you can never have enough.” And you have to be willing to claw and compete at any (literal) cost to get it. That’s what millennials learned. Yet they’re still somehow shocked that none of their unpaid labor (starting at the school level) has yielded a substantial return.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • A.I., a new ‘superhuman’ and the Fourth Industrial Revolution is just the latest revival of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’ concept

    A.I., a new ‘superhuman’ and the Fourth Industrial Revolution is just the latest revival of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’ concept

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    “Man is something that shall be overcome,” the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in his 1883 classic Thus Spoke Zarathustra. “Man is a rope, tied between beast and superman—a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”

    When he wrote this, the famously troubled intellectual was reckoning with ambivalent feelings about German culture (including a fallout with his friend, the composer Richard Wagner), a series of illnesses, and an opium habit that very likely constituted a drug addiction. But he was also grappling with what historians call the Second Industrial Revolution, that is, the revolution of mass production.

    Much of Nietzsche’s writings, obscure in his own lifetime, foreshadowed a 20th century full of what he called “nihilism,” especially his famous proclamation, “God is dead.” In his place was the superman, or “Übermensch,” a determiner of his own life, who eschews traditional Christian mores and births his own system of values that allows him to conquer all human challenges. Now artificial intelligence is here, and modern technologists are proclaiming a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” that will give birth to a new “superhuman,” which begs the question, is humanity still the proverbial rope over the abyss?

    It’s worth a look back at how we got here.

    Faster than a speeding bullet  

    During times of technological upheaval, it seems that Nietszche’s prophecy of the birth of the Übermensch always reemerges. There are two famous examples—you already know them. 

    First, about a half-century after Nietzsche conceived his version, Action Comics released its first issue in 1939, featuring a character named “Superman” who went on to become the very first comic-book superhero just as the world was hurtling into the atomic age, recently depicted in the blockbuster smash hit, “Oppenheimer.” As society digested the breakthroughs of the Second Industrial Revolution, creating modern cities full of elevators, skyscrapers and cars, Superman represented a figure who could easily conquer modern technology. It was all there in the catch phrase: “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” (Even this phrase itself was industrial in nature, originating in a 1940 show for the radio, an entirely new technology.) 

    While Nietzsche’s Übermensch was an embodiment of religious rejection, a being who transcended the mores of the Christian church, the character of Superman nodded to generations of human advancement, with abilities including bulletproof skin and laser-beaming eyes. 

    Moreover, Nietzsche’s Übermensch was an aspirational concept whose name literally evokes a higher plane, and DC’s Superman is from the alien world of Krypton, a planet more sophisticated than Earth. Not only is Superman physically superior to the normal man, but he retains aspects of the original Übermensch as a pillar of moral uprightness. Even in his alter ego as Clark Kent, he is morally infallible as an idealistic journalist (the most morally correct profession, of course). 

    The superman goes hand-in-hand with the concept of transhumanism embraced by capitalists and technologists—the idea that advanced technology will allow humans to transformatively augment themselves and their environment. It harkens back to Nietzsche’s vision of man as a “rope” and “something to be overcome,” or in the transhumanist view, a base for mechanization. Within transhumanism is the concept of the “new man,” a utopian ideal of the perfect person, a concept coopted decades after Nietzsche’s death by non-Democratic movements ranging from Communism to Fascism to its subset, Nazism, each of which envisioned the perfect citizen created through science and tech. Even the most casual student of 20th century history knows this went tragically and horrifically wrong.

    While these concepts seem bizarre to a 21st century digital native, they’re actually still heavily embedded into mainstream politics and pop culture. The world’s richest man himself, Elon Musk, is a known transhumanist who is actively working on projects to colonize space and insert computer chips into our brains. Science fiction has flourished by examining variations on the  superman and the transhuman, often in dystopian ways, for example with Blade Runner in the 1980s and The Matrix more recently. Even this summer’s smash hit Barbie movie dabbles in transhumanism, as a plastic doll blessed with the stereotypical ideal of femininity and beauty ventures into the real world, although several readings of that film land with the takeaway that there’s just no way to be a Superwoman in modern life.

    In "The Matrix," humans become more than that by plugging into machines.

    Whatever happened to the Superman of the 21st century?

    We see the superman concept, especially as it intersects with technology, as a frequently used political tool because of the inherent stratification an “ideal” person erects. And although transhumanism is toyed with by socialists and capitalists alike, sociologists have theorized that political transhumanism could birth Capitalism 2.0, an era hyperfixated on tech-driven productivity leaps. 

    Now, as we are rounding the bend on the Fourth Industrial Revolution—the revolution of smart automation, interconnectivity, and artificial intelligence—philosophy buffs may be wondering what will emerge as the Übermensch of our time. While it’s early, to be sure, history hints that people will search for an aspirational icon that can transcend the power frameworks of our time.

    One person has already posited a theory that our Übermensch will be A.I.: Masayoshi Son, one of the world’s richest men, has already labeled the invention as the “Birth of Superhuman.” Son, who has been a major venture capital investor for decades and is the CEO of Japan’s SoftBank, announced to investors this year that the emergence of ChatGPT brought him to a tearful existential crisis over A.I. and the meaning of life, before deciding to dedicate his company and career to “design[ing] the future of humanity.” Sounds slightly tangential to Nietzsche’s crisis on nihilism.

    This surely isn’t to say that Son is the next Nietzsche—but the resemblance to the Übermensch is unmistakable. Son told SoftBank shareholders that he pitches and refines ideas with A.I. every day, and had used the tool to develop over 600 new inventions in less than a year. Through a transhumanist lens, he’s using emerging technology to hugely augment his intelligence and ideation abilities. As the world goes through another technological upheaval, and people look for an aspirational entity that can transcend the power framework of our time, it’s important to ask what that framework is. Arguably, it’s information. 

    In the way that Nietzche’s Übermensch controlled his own infallible set of morals, or comic books’ Superman controlled his invulnerable body, perhaps the parallel can be drawn of A.I. controlling its vast, 10,000 chip-cache of knowledge. The difference is that the Übermensch and Superman existed as fictional characters, without any real way for people to interact with them. They were aspirational, while A.I. is a real tool that’s driving rapid change in the world. 

    It’s too early to say how A.I. will transform the workforce, but we should probably take any notion of a superhuman with a grain of salt. Maybe humanity is a rope over an abyss, but the surest way to fall into it is through the pursuit of superpowers through technology.

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    Rachel Shin, Nick Lichtenberg

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  • Pee-wee’s Big Capitulation: As “Weird” As Pee-wee Was, He Was Still A Material Boy of the 80s

    Pee-wee’s Big Capitulation: As “Weird” As Pee-wee Was, He Was Still A Material Boy of the 80s

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    Perhaps it’s difficult to imagine a world in which “weird” isn’t a sellable commodity. It certainly wasn’t an effortless sell in the Reagan 80s. Not until a then little-known persona by the name of Pee-wee Herman released a movie called Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The year was 1985, and the director was also then little-known Tim Burton. A man who would, in addition to Pee-wee, go on to make “weird” “his thing.” And in the 80s, it seemed no one (at least not at the executive level) was yet fully aware of the kind of profitability that could signal. Until the surprise hit of Summer 1985 was Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (released the same year as Back to the Future and The Goonies, each with their own product placement machinations). It was to mark Burton’s first feature-length film, and one that he was given the opportunity to direct because Paul Reubens liked what he saw in Burton’s first two short films, Vincent and Frankenweenie. 

    As it turned out, there was no better man for the job, with the surreal, offbeat tone of the narrative (which takes a page from Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief [obviously with a more comedic slant]) perfectly suited to Burton’s already well-established style, complete with musical accompaniments from Danny Elfman. Needless to say, it was a style that would serve a plot like this for the better. Because the more over-the-top and bizarre it was, the easier it became to ignore a lack of “realism” and get invested in the loss of this man-boy’s bike. To feel his pain…and his joy when the red cruiser is at last found again.

    His obsession with it, some might argue, is purely sentimental. And after all, he’s sure to tell his nemesis, Francis (Mark Holton), “I wouldn’t sell my bike for all the money in the world.” This after Francis tries to buy it off him because his father said he could have anything he wanted for his birthday. Pee-wee is the first to burst the rich kid’s bubble, giving him a lesson on how some things aren’t for sale. And yet, more than an emotional attachment to the bike, it’s obvious that he values it because of the status it gives him because it’s so sought-after. It’s about the way it makes him feel. So, for as absurd as the movie might come across, there’s nothing more rooted in realism than that. Perhaps few films of the 80s are able to better embody the importance an object can have to a person. Become a very extension of that person (presaging how phones would do the same thing). Which doesn’t seem coincidental considering the decade it was released. 

    At a time of ramped-up consumerism, “synergy” was becoming an increasing buzz word in the realm of advertising. And in the 80s, cross-promotional items from movies were the name of the game. From Rambo lunchboxes to Slimer from Ghostbusters-themed Hi-C packaging (bless your resilient little guts if you imbibed the “Ecto Cooler”), the only thing better than tie-in products, for corporations anyway, was getting their wares placed in the film itself. With 1982’s E.T., Hershey’s set the trend for the pervasive product placement viewers would barely notice anymore after so many hours spent absorbing media in that fashion. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure would prove no exception to the 80s movie rule. Starting with the Murray bicycle itself, Pee-wee’s odyssey is as much a consumerist one as it is a quest to unearth his bike. 

    The ease with which companies got in bed with movies was, in part, spurred by Reagan’s deregulation policies, which themselves were the brainchild of big business and a collective of nefarious think tanks that banded together in the 1970s to present theories about how newly-enacted environmental and consumer protection laws were serving as nothing more than senseless red tape to slow down economic progress and give more fuel to stagflation. With everything suddenly in favor of “servicing the corporation,” there appeared to be no calling into question the “ethics” of presenting these products so flagrantly. And, after all, weren’t the movies just doing viewers a solid by reflecting the America they lived in right back to them? An endless parade of adverts all shouting the same thing, “Buy me!” Or, to use a subliminal message from They Live, “Obey.” Obey what, exactly? Society, capitalism and the status quo. 

    What’s more, Reubens and Burton are adept in the language of how to make someone appear left out for not having the “right” product. Or at least a product of a similar vein to the “hottest thing.” So it is that, just after Pee-wee’s bike is stolen, he’s forced to wander the strip mall street on foot, like some sort of peasant, while everyone else around him is on a bike. Even the motorized toys. Thus, he’s now been cut down to size, made “lesser than”—when only twenty minutes ago, he was the peacocking bike rider trying to outperform the tricks of the kids around him riding on less cumbersome wheels. The underlying message: you are what you own. Property is the thing—this being why it’s such a standout moment to see that one of the crowning additions to Pee-wee’s bike is an engraved plate that reads, “Property of Pee-wee Herman.” And what’s more essential to capitalistic adherence than owning property? Property that becomes so easy to confuse with “characteristics” of ourselves. So it is that Pee-wee’s identity is as entrenched in the bike as it is in making random, off-color laughing sounds. His refusal to accept any substitutes also speaks to the concept of brand loyalty. Nothing else will compare to or ever be as good as the bike Pee-wee had before. He wants what he wants, and nothing else will do. 

    In 80s America, this type of mentality was at an apex, with “nothing but the best” philosophies at play as a means to further distinguish Western capitalism from Soviet communism (and yes, the Soviets do get accused by Pee-wee of stealing his bike). Pee-wee, for as “different” as he is, still falls prey to that pervasive mentality. The vestiges of which continue to endure to this apocalyptic day. For, as the Pee-wee’s Big Adventure-influenced movie, Barbie, puts it, “Ideas live forever.” And capitalistic ones are all but impossible to deprogram people of. This, in part, is why Pee-wee Herman cannot exactly lay genuine claim to a phrase like, “I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.” For, in the end, he capitulates to not only being a slave to an object—his bike—but also to giving in to a monogamous relationship with Dottie. Because, the truth is, even the biggest “weirdos” just want stability and nice things. Surrendering to the warmth (becoming much more literal every day) provided by material trappings.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Fan/Performer Dynamic Keeps Getting Decidedly More Employer/Employee

    The Fan/Performer Dynamic Keeps Getting Decidedly More Employer/Employee

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    It used to seem so glamorous to be an “entertainer.” Yet even that word has connotations of being like a monkey with cymbals, “programmed” to perform no matter what the conditions or state of will and desire. In the latest instance of pelting something at musicians onstage (following the illustrious Bebe Rexha incident), Cardi B has proven herself to be a rare (but expected) rejector of “taking shit.” Or rather, “taking drink.” One that was splashed in her general direction as she was in the middle of partially lip-syncing “Bodak Yellow” at Drai’s Beachclub in Las Vegas. A town not exactly known for harboring people with the best etiquette (as Adele tried to anticipate). After all, it’s still considered America’s playground. Except that Cardi B wasn’t playing when she reacted to a large splash of someone’s drink getting deliberately thrown in her general direction by tossing a microphone back at that person. Though “tossing” is too soft a word for the pelting wrath she exhibited. 

    To add to the surreal, ironic quality of it all, the lyrics playing as Cardi launched the mic at the woman (yes, it was a woman) who sloshed her drink were, “If I see you and I don’t speak, that means I don’t fuck with you/I’m a boss, you a worker bitch/I make bloody moves.” How eerily apropos. Not just because things got violent, but because of how the fan/entertainer dynamic has been inverted of late. Where once famous people were endlessly confident about their role as the “superior” party, things have shifted to a point where fans feel entitled to demand more from the people they “admire” as they realize that, “technically,” they’re the ones who employ the celebrity. Keep expensive shelter over their head, posh food on their table and designer clothes on their back.

    So just as fans giveth, so can they taketh away. A reality Doja Cat was faced with recently when she went off on fans giving her grief for dating J.Cyrus, an “entertainer” himself, one supposes. His history of sexual misconduct (in addition to some unearthed racist tweets for good measure) have drawn ire from those who wanted Doja Cat to explain herself. In response, she said, “I don’t give a fuck what you think about my personal life, I never have and never will give a fuck what you think about me and my personal life. Goodbye and good riddance miserable hoes haha!” She then went on to degrade her fans by giving such “fiery” “advice” as, “If you call yourself a ‘kitten’ or fucking ‘kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house.”

    Ah, the old jobist insult. But what sat even less well with her “Kittenz” was the fact that when a fan wrote in the comments section that they just wanted to hear her say she loved them, Doja spat back, “I don’t though cuz I don’t even know yall.” Where’s the lie? And yet, it’s the closest any celebrity has come to outright admitting how pathetic they think their fans are, and really, just need them for the cash. Except that Doja has also insisted she doesn’t actually need them anymore. Not just because she’s already rich now, but because she wants to emphasize that it was she who did the work to get where she is today. And yet, the complicated reality is that, without those legions of fans who paid attention to her from the beginning, she wouldn’t have those mountains of cash to fall back on after speaking her blunt, Liar Liar-level truth to them.

    This serves as the crux of the issue at hand of late for why fans feel an entitlement to celebrities as their “property” (much the same way employers do with their employees, ergo treating them with similar acts of abusive behavior that an employer themselves would never suffer). In a manner that society has never really seen before. And yes, the evolution of the internet commingling with fame and how it interacts with fans is a key part of that. 

    Taylor Swift, who has become a master in the art of cultivating parasocial relationships with her fans, knows something about that, too. And she wants “Swifties” to believe the contrary of what Doja has been touting. That she really cares about them and their well-being. Sure, maybe she does (at least enough to break up with Matty Healy due to the backlash against him). That is, as much as one can care about an endless sea of amorphous faces flashing the cash, so to speak, from the crowd. Her far more amenable attitude has translated into astronomical profits as she continues to parade her Eras Tour. Which, like Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, has created entire micro-economies in every town it stops in. Funnily enough, it was a Swiftie who waded into the comments section of Doja’s “I don’t even know yall” moment to explain the fan perspective on things: “And we don’t know you. But we supported you through thick and thin. Mind you you’d be nothing without us. You’d be working at a grocery store making songs on garageband miss high school dropout.” Maybe a bit harsh, but, to be fair, Doja’s willful lack of education shines through on songs like “Get Into It (Yuh).” 

    Cardi B, who is also rarely known for censoring herself or her emotions, seems to be better adept at showcasing the idea that, ultimately, her fans are just consumers (and there’s really nothing too personal about that). Hence, her innumerable product deals ranging from Pepsi to Reebok to…Whip Shots. Thus, it’s harder to mistake that “Cardi” is a brand she wants to sell for the benefit of Belcalis…and her family with Offset. The subject of which has provided narrative fodder for her latest collaboration with him, “Jealousy.” It is in said video that, incidentally, Cardi launches a shoe at Offset as he leaves their apartment in a huff. Don’t say she didn’t warn anyone who trifled with her that she has a knack for aiming unexpected objects when vexed. In fact, before she threw the microphone at her “fan,” she had already gotten into another altercation at Drai’s Beachclub with the DJ who cut her song off early. So admittedly, Cardi can be a little too quick to react with her microphone sometimes. And in the now viral video, you can see how it takes her only a split second to counterattack with that launch of a much more damaging object than liquid. 

    While the likes of Bebe Rexha and Ava Max were too stunned to instantaneously retaliate for the far more damaging abuse they got onstage, Cardi seems to have patently decided: enough. Almost like the barrage of employees during the Great Resignation who were struck with the overdue epiphany that they “didn’t have to take it anymore,” Cardi seems to have come to the same conclusion by actually fighting back against the “boss” who forgot that “workers” hold all the power. Until they need more money…

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “I Keep My Side of the Street Clean”—Not!: Taylor Swift’s Garbage (Not to Be Confused With Taylor Swift Is Garbage)

    “I Keep My Side of the Street Clean”—Not!: Taylor Swift’s Garbage (Not to Be Confused With Taylor Swift Is Garbage)

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    Like most things that the hoi polloi are expected to endure/“deal with,” celebrities and the otherwise wealthy are not. For someone of Taylor Swift’s caliber (financially speaking), that certainly applies tenfold. And if that wasn’t already made apparent from the public release of her carbon footprint that reported her as emitting 8,293.54 tonnes of carbon a year thanks to private jet-setting alone, then maybe her latest example of “It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me” will make it undeniably clear. And that is: her blasé attitude about trash. More specifically, disposing of it in a manner that would be expected of a “plebe.”

    But before we get to that, let us remember that Swift perhaps ultimately skirted a full-tilt backlash against the private jet controversy by claiming that the majority of the flights taken were a result of loaning out her jet. As though that somehow made her inculpable just because her bony ass allegedly wasn’t in the seat. What’s more, the report of Swift’s numerous flights came out at the same time as records of Kylie Jenner’s twenty-minute flights were released. Flights that could have been a slightly longer drive between Riverside and L.A. Counties. Jenner confirmed her own outrageous behavior by posting an image she thought was going to “serve” in July of 2022—featuring her in “Hollywood embrace” pose with her equally atrocious baby daddy, Travis Scott, as the two stood in between their respective private jets, captioned with the braggadocious question, “You wanna take mine or yours?”

    With Jenner being instantly lambasted as a climate criminal (where’s the lie?), Swift’s crown as the reigning queen of private jet usage ultimately got lost in the shuffle of broad-spectrum outrage over private plane rides (with Britney Spears perhaps being the only one to get a “pass” as a result of all she’s been through). And any thoughts of Swift as someone “criminal” eventually “petered out” once she released another album, and America was reminded again of just how much they love their sweetheart (grotesque little CO2 emitter or not). Even if, with Midnights, it seemed Taylor was actually trolling people a bit with a line (from the climate change-y “Snow on the Beach” no less) like, “And my flight was awful/Thanks for asking.” Of course, that’s hard to believe when considering the lavish accommodations of a private jet she calls “The Number 13.” A number she has long considered to be lucky, as a matter of fact—referencing it in songs and videos galore and, as mentioned, opting to brandish it as the moniker of her personal plane, to boot. So yeah, if it ever crashed, that surely might change her views on the digit bearing something like luck, rendering her just another average person with a case of triskaidekaphobia.

    But getting to her latest case of environmentally-unfriendly behavior, Swift has come under fire (mainly by the New York Sanitation Department) for her less than exemplary “disposal” methods. To that end, ironically enough, Swift also boasts on Midnights (during “Karma”), “I keep my side of the street clean/You wouldn’t know what I mean.” Evidently, she’s the one who doesn’t even know what she means, relying on the tried-and-true “just make it go away with money” method that most celebrities are inclined to. After all, what’s the point of being a celebrity if you can’t enjoy such “perks” in exchange for the violation of your privacy? Such perks being to pay thousands of dollars in fines to avoid actually keeping your side of the street clean—all while your privacy is invaded by way of habits being revealed through the exposure of your trash. Something that media outlets are only too happy to report on (including, but not limited to, the presence of liquor bottles and cigarettes butts…how Olsen twins circa the 00s-esque).

    Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem to bother Swift that much. Or at least not enough to clean up a.k.a. hire someone else to do the job. For, as of July 2023, Swift has been ticketed thirty-two times by the New York Sanitation Department and fined roughly three thousand dollars (which amounts to three cents for a person of Swift’s echelon) for her inability 1) dispose of her trash correctly, 2) failing to keep the front area of her building clean and 3) generally parading a dirty sidewalk year-round—regardless of being on tour or not. Considering Swift essentially “owns” the block she inhabits on Franklin Street in Tribeca, she’s the only one responsible for “keeping this place clean,” to quote Prince’s dad in Purple Rain.

    Naturally, Swifties were quick to come to the defense of their beloved “mother,” assuring, “It’s probably the fans waiting for her and smoking while they’re bored.” Whether that’s true or not, it doesn’t change the reality that Swift is the one responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of the block she’s made her own private island on an island. What’s more, who’s to say that she doesn’t smoke now and again? For, despite her “squeaky clean” image—complete with the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan aesthetic—Swift has broken away from it in the years since she went from country to pop star, going on to—gasp!—swear in her lyrics and openly drink in public/on camera (her affinity for wine being well-known by now). Indeed, her love of the drink is just about the only thing that’s made her a “baddie,” while her foil, Lana Del Rey, instead relies on vaping and smoking since she gave up drinking long ago after her teenage bout with alcoholism. In short, regardless of her fans’ disbelief that “pure” Taylor could bear such trash herself, the report stating that “there are cigarette packs, stacks of newspapers, liquor bottles, cardboard boxes and ashtrays scattered on the sidewalk” actually does jive with Swift’s lifestyle, as well as the company she keeps. Being so convinced she’s a “New York bohemian” and all.

    Those who aren’t defending her and trying to say it’s not her fault (including Swift herself, who seems to be fighting the charges on “principle” alone—because, again, 3K is nothing to her) are instead commending the “bad bitch” contents of her waste. Namely, Charli XCX, who retweeted one of the headlines about Swift’s trash with the caption, “My kinda girl.” And yet, increasingly, Swift has proven herself to be no one’s kind of girl. At least not in terms of displaying the level of consideration required of somebody who wants to truly set an example for others about not being so reckless with the climate’s well-being just because you “can be”/claim you “have to be” (“for work”). Alas, money is a celebrity’s multifaceted superpower as much as any corporate shill at the top of the company food chain. A “superpower” that serves as the driving force behind why the environment continues to be pillaged and violated in such vast and ceaseless ways. Then again, perhaps Swift should be commended for ultimately helping to “end” New York sooner.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Monetize (And Monetize And Monetize) Your Talent: Air Explores the Birth of a New American Dream: Passive Income

    Monetize (And Monetize And Monetize) Your Talent: Air Explores the Birth of a New American Dream: Passive Income

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    If Air seeks to emphasize one thing, it’s that you should always leverage your talent to secure the utmost profit. That’s certainly what Michael Jordan did back in 1984 as a rookie who made an unthinkable negotiation with Nike. One that would, for the first time in history, allow an athlete like Jordan to earn a percentage of every pair of Air Jordans sold. After all, it was his name on the sneakers, his name spurring all the sales. So why shouldn’t he get his cut? This question is present throughout the narrative thread of Air, which revolves entirely around the lead-up to making this landmark deal. Marking Ben Affleck’s fifth directorial effort following Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Argo and Live By Night, Air is a much more blatant nod to the “American dream.” You know, the one that pertains solely to bowing down to capitalism a.k.a. “getting this money.” Ironically, it’s also distributed by Amazon, which Nike no longer sells their shoes through in a bid to “elevate consumer experiences through more direct, personal relationships.”

    Sort of the way Jordan wanted to elevate the consumer experience of his adoring fans by giving them “a piece of himself” through a shoe. Fittingly enough, both Nike and Michael Jordan are quintessential American dream stories, with the latter being a shoestring operation (pun intended) co-founded in 1964 by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight (Affleck) and his coach, Bill Bowerman (though Alex Convery, the writer of Air, doesn’t bother to mention his name). It was Knight who sold the company’s (then known as Blue Ribbon Sports) first shoe offerings (made by Onitsuka Tiger, a brand that, for whatever reason, agreed to let Knight be the U.S.’ exclusive distributor) out of the back of his car at track meets most of the time. Steadily, Blue Ribbon Sports kept making a name for itself as a leader in distributing Japanese running shoes. But it was in 1971 that Bowerman fucked around with his own innovation by using his wife’s waffle iron to create a different kind of rubber sole for the benefit of runners. One that was lightweight, therefore conducive to increasing speed. This was also the year the company rebranded to Nike and was bequeathed with its signature swoosh logo by graphic designer Carolyn Davidson. With the “Moon Shoe” and the “Waffle Trainer” released in 1972 and 1974 respectively, Nike sales exploded into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

    Jordan’s Cinderella story comes across as having slightly fewer hiccups in his rise to prominence, the main one being his slight by the varsity high school team when he was a sophomore at Emsley A. Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina. Written off as too short for varsity, Jordan waited patiently to grow four more inches and asserted himself as the star of Laney’s JV team. After getting his spot on varsity, it didn’t take long for a number of colleges to offer him a scholarship. He settled on University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, quickly distinguishing himself on the basketball team there and having no trouble eventually catching the eye of Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, rejoining his true love onscreen), Nike’s then basketball talent scout (at a time when such “lax” job roles were still in existence). Convinced of Jordan’s status as a once-in-a-generation talent, he begs and pleads with Knight to use the entire basketball budget to offer Jordan an endorsement deal.

    Alas, although named after the Greek goddess who personifies victory, Nike was anything but victorious in being a basketball shoe contender with the likes of Converse and Adidas as 1984 commenced. After all, the company had been built on running shoes. That had always been their bread and butter. Nonetheless, Vaccaro still can’t figure out why basketball players are so averse to putting their faith in Nike. But, as Howard White (Chris Tucker), the VP of Nike’s Basketball Athlete Relations tells Sonny, “Nike is a damn jogging company. Black people don’t jog. You ain’t gonna catch no Black person running twenty-six miles for no damn reason. Man, the cops probably pull you over thinkin’ you done stole something.” Which isn’t far off considering the need for shirts like, “Don’t Shoot, It’s Just Cardio” (tragically inspired by the death of Ahmaud Arbery).

    Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), the VP of Marketing for Basketball, is more naively optimistic during a meeting in which he says, “Mr. Orwell was right. 1984 has been a tough year. Our sales are down, our growth is down. But this company is about who we really are when we are down for the count.” That said, Strasser and Knight both insist they have a strict 250K budget to attract three players. Sonny tells Strasser he doesn’t want to sign three players, he wants to sign just one: Jordan. He paints Strasser the innovative-for-its-time picture, “We build a shoe line just around him. We tap into something deeper, into the player’s identity.” This being something that would become the subsequent norm with endorsement deals, not just from sports players, but every kind of celebrity.

    To this end, it’s of no small significance that Air opens with Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing,” a song that derides famous ilk (namely, rock stars) who get money for doing no “real” work, like those who have to fritter their hours away in a minimum wage job at an appliance store (the site where Mark Knopfler overheard a man making derisive comments about the people he was seeing on MTV and then turned the rant into “Money For Nothing”). Jordan, too, might be seen that way by some, at least for making millions (billions?) for doing nothing other than allowing a shoe with his name and silhouette on it to be sold. And as “Money For Nothing” plays, Affleck gets us into the mindset of what the 80s were all about: consumer culture melding with pop culture. For it was in the 80s that the potential for endorsement deals, fueled by Reaganomics’ love of neoliberalism on steroids, were fully realized and taken advantage of.

    Sonny, seeing something entirely American in Jordan, crystallizes his feelings about him to Phil by insisting that he is “the most competitive guy I’ve ever seen. He is a fucking killer.” And that means he’s going to kill for Nike, profit-wise. As Sonny chases down a meeting with Jordan, who has made his disdain for the company abundantly clear (especially as he “loves” Adidas), it’s through his mother, Deloris (Viola Davis, who, although Jordan had no involvement in the production of the film, was offered as a suggestion by him to play the part), that Sonny finds his “in” with Michael. Much to the consternation of Michael’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), who distinctly warns Sonny not to contact the family.

    But Sonny has no interest in following rules, if that hadn’t already been made evident. And when he finally does land the pitch meeting with Jordan, he’s sure to tell him and his parents that Michael’s trajectory is “an American story, and that’s why Americans are gonna love it.” He then adds, as a coup de grâce in terms of flattery, “A shoe is just a shoe…until somebody steps into it [words Deloris will remind him of later when bargaining for Michael’s cut of the profits]. Then it has meaning. The rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness.” And that, in the end, is how Jordan makes four hundred million dollars a year in passive income from a shoe.

    Even if it was an initial struggle for Deloris to lock down that income. Indeed, when Sonny tells her that Nike will never go for her and Michael’s demand and that the business is simply unfair in that regard, Deloris replies, “I agree that the business is unfair. It’s unfair to my son, it’s unfair to people like you. But every once in a while, someone comes along that’s so extraordinary, that it forces those reluctant to part with some of [their] wealth [to do so]. Not out of charity, but out of greed, because they are so very special. And even more rare, that person demands to be treated according to their worth, because they understand what they are worth.”

    With such an ardent speech about getting money, getting paid, it highlights that, more than just being a movie about how capitalism allows companies to exploit those making the most money for them, Air is about how capitalism indoctrinates the human brain so much as to make it believe that everything has to be about money. That the greatest art of all is not the art or skill itself, but how to get the most one possibly can for it. So it is that Bruce Springsteen’s always cringe-y hit, “Born in the U.S.A.,” plays while viewers are given epilogues to each person’s financially profitable fate. Funnily enough, Strasser had specifically mentioned to Vaccaro earlier in the film that one of the songs most beloved by Republicans (Reagan himself famously cited it for his presidential “cause”) is not about the hallowed notion of the American dream at all. In fact, as he tells Sonny, he was listening to it on his way to work most mornings (it had just come out during the year Air takes place), and he was all “fired up about American freedom…but this morning, I really focused on the words. And it is not about freedom. Like, not in any way. It’s about a guy who comes home from Vietnam, can’t find a job and I’m just belting it out enthusiastically.”

    There’s something to that analogy in looking for the deeper, perhaps unwitting meaning to Air. It isn’t really about the beauty of the American dream, but how ugly and petty it makes everyone pursuing it for the sake of as many pieces of paper as possible.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “Snow on the Beach,” Climate Change Child’s Play, Doesn’t Provide the Best Simile For Evoking the “Unusual” Phenomenon of Falling in Requited Love

    “Snow on the Beach,” Climate Change Child’s Play, Doesn’t Provide the Best Simile For Evoking the “Unusual” Phenomenon of Falling in Requited Love

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    Even when “Snow on the Beach” was “first” released on the first iteration of Taylor Swift’s Midnights, “all the way back” in October of 2022, it was already a stretch to liken something “weird” (i.e., falling in requited love with someone) to snow falling on the beach. Because if the past several years should have taught people—even those in a protective bubble like Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey—anything, it’s that formerly “absurd” weather phenomena are now to be the norm (along with arbitrarily unleashed novel viruses). Nay, they are the norm. And, although some wouldn’t expect it, it is, in fact, rising temperatures that can eventually result in extremely cold weather scenarios. More specifically, “Ice Age” weather scenarios.

    Take, for example, the “cold blob” of water that has come to roost in the area south of Greenland. Its origins are a result of melting glaciers—melting ever more rapidly as we keep ordering our useless shit from the internet. And yet, despite the scalding temperatures that are visiting Earth at present, the effect those temperatures have on “water blobs” like the one south of Greenland influence the flow of the Gulf Stream, which is responsible for “ferrying” warm water to the north. If that flow is compromised enough, the litany of consequences could include, but are not limited to, a steep drop in temperatures throughout Europe, rising sea levels on the East Coast and more ferocious, unpredictable hurricanes. And that’s just on the Atlantic side of things. The Pacific has its own barrage of ticking time bombs.

    The bottom line, of course, is that seeing snow on the beach would hardly be “surprising” or “unusual” in an Ice Age kind of setting. Or just a post-climate apocalypse one. A “setting” that Swift herself is arguably more responsible for than Del Rey, with the former being an avid private jet user and the latter being just a garden-variety lover of casual joy riding in her car (#justride). Nonetheless, they relish singing, in “angelic” voices on the newest edition of the song (featuring “More Lana”) from Midnights (The Til Dawn Edition), “Are we falling like snow at the beach/Weird but fuckin’ beautiful?” To be clear, it’s neither that weird nor is it especially “beautiful,” so much as utterly unsettling and chilling (no pun intended).

    Yet the eeriness of such a sight is taken as an opportunity for Swift and Del Rey to try their hand at some overly wistful and romantic Jane Austen shit. Austen, however, gets a pass for being so maudlin about falling in love because she lived in an era where climate change was nary a thought in one’s mind (despite the fact that she witnessed the height of the British Industrial Revolution). She could afford to be “chimerical.” Technically, so can Swift and Del Rey, who comprise the echelons of wealth that will be able to, in some form or other, shield themselves from the climate change fallout (perhaps with an actual fallout shelter).

    With Del Rey being given the opportunity on the new version of “Snow on the Beach” to sing a full verse, she croons, “This scene feels like what I once saw on a screen/I searched ‘aurora borealis green.’” This, too, brings up the fact that even the Northern Lights aren’t immune to the taint of climate change either. Like the stars in the sky dimming as a result of light pollution, aurora borealis will suffer from its own dimming—but, in this case, due to alterations in cloud formations that will inevitably obscure the brilliance of the lights. So yes, Del Rey will actually need to search on a screen for the kind of erstwhile “aurora borealis green” she’s looking for.

    Barring climate change as a reason for snow on the beach, there’s also the consideration of how many beaches already do offer up snowy tableaus regularly. For example, Kings Beach in Tahoe, Chatham Lighthouse Beach in Cape Cod, Unstad Beach on Norway’s Lofoten Islands (where you can see aurora borealis), Sopot Beach in Sopot, Poland and Loch Morlich Beach in the Scottish Highlands. Then you have the beach that made snow on the beach truly famous: the one in Montauk where a large portion of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes place. And perhaps Swift got her inspiration from this very movie, what with Joel and Clementine starting to fall back in love on the now snow-dappled beach they initially met on.

    And yet, snow is just as liable to become part of “the new normal” (that hideous phrase people like to use to “normalize” the long-forewarned effects of capitalism) in places perennially associated with “nothing but sunshine.” Case in point, one beach that wasn’t accustomed to getting snow until recent years is Torre Lapillo in Puglia. The unlikely snowfall that occurred there in 2017 dredged up a five-hundred-year-old prophecy from Matteo Tafuri that stated two days of snowfall in Salento would be part of heralding the apocalypse. The snow came again in 2019. So surely, we’re that much closer. If not to the kind of apocalypse that signals a bang so much as a whimper, then at least the kind that standardizes snow on the beach to a point where Tay and LDR’s simile becomes increasingly less meaningful.

    As for Wallace S. Broecker, the preeminent scientist who made the term “global warming” take off in the 70s (before Dick Cheney decided that sounded too “icky” and made “climate change” the phrase instead), he’s likely not hearing the song from beyond the grave with much glee. After all, he had urged the world, before his death in 2019, to take far more drastic measures to avoid the “many more surprises in the greenhouse” to come. Trying to make snow on the beach seem like something “abnormal” while we’re already living in a climate change scenario certainly isn’t going to help with that.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Succession-core? Sofia Richie Style? “Stealth Wealth” and the Lie of “Looking Rich”

    Succession-core? Sofia Richie Style? “Stealth Wealth” and the Lie of “Looking Rich”

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    Rich people can dress badly too

    When the new season of HBO’s Succession aired, of course, there was all the usual commentary and speculation — who would take over the Roy’s empire? What awful thing would this family do to each other next? What the hell did all that business stuff mean?

    But this season more than ever, people were talking about the clothes.

    But why? In Succession, the attire is mostly business suits and the conservative attire of the super-rich. It’s not the riveting vacation wear of White Lotus — despite its plethora of ritzy and glamorous settings. No, whether they’re in the boardroom or boating between Greek Islands, the Succession cast keeps it buttoned up. And this was exactly what got everyone so intrigued.

    Instead of the ostentatious clothing of the nouveau riche, fashion commentators argued, the Roy’s outfit choices revealed a type of style preferred by old money. Reserved, quality-focused clothes with nary a label in sight are chosen from big-name brands and peacocking.

    While this has always been the case in Succession’s costume choices, it was brought to the forefront of conversation after Tom’s speech about the “ludicrously capacious bag” that Greg’s guest brought to Logan’s party in Episode 1.

    While the oohing and ahhing at fictional billionaires on television was an interesting thought experiment, it wasn’t until Sofia Richie’s wedding that “Quiet Luxury” became the ruling trend of the moment.

    Think about it: the Met Gala, the Coronation — none of them infiltrated the public consciousness the way Sofia Richie’s wedding did. For a mid-tier nepo baby, mostly known for being the former girlfriend of Scott Disick and the daughter of Lionel Richie, there was no real reason for this wedding to be so momentous.

    But with the unending press coverage of the Gen-Z brides’ mastery of social media, people are still calling this the wedding of the year — maybe even the decade. Even Hailey and Justin Bieber’s wedding got this much constant attention on social media. It was a Pinterest dream. The American royal wedding, some are calling it. A fantasy grounded not in over-the-top spectacle or Dolce and Gabbana gimmicky clothes (we’re looking at you, Travis and Kourtney) — but in its simplicity.

    Sofia’s subdued, classic-inspired outfits for the whole weekend contained minimal labels, modest silhouettes, and a more mature, put-together style than the zeitgeist has been used to.

    Many compared her pinned-up, classic style to Hailey Bieber’s more laid-back, casual style. I mean, Hailey famously wore a custom pair of Air Force 1s to her wedding. Sofia spent the whole weekend in a parade of Chanel slingbacks.

    So, with the wedding that launched a thousand Pinterest boards, the it-girl crown was passed from Hailey and her cool girl, #CleanLook glory, to Sofia, whose aspirational “stealth wealth” set a new tone for emerging trends.

    But here’s the question: is “Quiet Luxury” really that quiet?

    In the past month, searches for brands like Chanel, The Row, and Loro Piana have skyrocketed with people trying to emulate this more subdued, old-money look. However, if we all recognize pieces from The Row, for example, aren’t they also status symbols … just without the logos? No one would claim that carrying a Birkin is “Quiet Luxury” or “Stealth Wealth” anymore since we all recognize the signature bag. Yet, it follows all the rules of those monikers — quality-focused, exclusive, minimal logo.

    And, when you think about it, what makes Sofia Richie’s wedding Quiet Luxury? The girl had three dresses custom-made by Chanel, with the famous Chanel rosette prominently featured in place of logos. Her looks would have been at home at the Met Gala. Not to mention the multiple Vogue videos showcasing her fittings at Chanel —that doesn’t sound so stealthy to me.

    Her wedding was also held at Cap Du Eden Roc, one of the most famous luxury hotels in the world. Every girl with generational wealth has a photo of its monumental steps on her Instagram, trust me. And for the cherry on top, Joel Madden sang the Good Charlotte song “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” at her bachelorette party.

    None of this is bad. In fact, it’s all pretty iconic. But the media has misappropriately turned this wedding into emblematic of “Quiet Luxury” when in fact … it’s just luxury.

    Another term for this aesthetic of affluence is “Old Money.” Though this term is not new, it more aptly encapsulates what’s really capturing the public’s attention. The allure of — and desire for — generational wealth is a tension that sits at the heart of Americana.

    American culture loves the “rags to riches” story of the self-made person (Kylie Jenner being the exception). However, the “refined” appeal of the old money set still has a hold on us as a culture. Hence, the reign of nepo babies — even fictional ones, like those in Succession.

    But before you go risking it all for a Loro Piana t-shirt, ask yourself — is this an aesthetic you even like? Most of the fits flashing across TikTok are just … boring? Not to mention, so much of the aesthetic is rooted in European standards of beauty — read: whiteness and thinness are the prerequisites of this aesthetic.

    @mark_boutilier

    #duet with @jemcityusa Nah this is WILD… #oldmoney #oldmoneyaesthetic

    The “Old Money” aesthetic is, by definition, not new. The current iteration of it is defined by cashmere, pleated pans, and J Crew tote bags. But every recession period makes fashion turn back to more subdued styles.

    Some are even calling a version of this trend “recession-core.” Recession core frowns on overly prominent declarations of wealth. No labels, of course, but also no big jewelry and no bold colors or fabrics.

    While this might be appealing to some, it’s young people on TikTok who are enamored by this trend. While bold colors and Y2K style ruled the first few post-pandemic years, this next phase of fashion seems to prioritize “looking rich.”

    While the economy is on a downturn, of course, the allure of generational wealth is more potent than ever. But the thing about dressing rich? It won’t make you look rich.

    Just because the veil has been lifted on some aspects of the lifestyles of the uber-wealthy — Eden Roc: in; capacious bags; out — there is so much about that world that is purposely concealed from us mere mortals.

    Even if you study the clothes, Instagram geotags, and hobbies of the super-rich, they’ll never confuse you for one of them. With purposely tight inner circles and generations of gatekeeping on their side, trying too hard to seem rich is a fruitless effort. Even Anna Delvy could only keep up the charade for so long — and she did it by convincing a bunch of new money try-hards that she was an heiress, not people with generational money.

    Attempting to “look rich” is gauche, whether you’re doing it with big brands or whatever Zara collection they’re rolling out to catch the stealth wealth trend. And moralizing an aesthetic just because it reflects the exorbitantly wealthy is problematic for a number of reasons.

    But beyond that, I think we can do better. I think fashion can be more interesting. If the “Quiet luxury” trend speaks to you, be my guest and pour your life savings into The Row. But don’t capitulate to the idea that just because rich people have something, the rest of us should want it.

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    LKC

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  • Ciara’s “Da Girls”: An Update on “Independent Women Part I” (But Is That Really A Good Thing?)

    Ciara’s “Da Girls”: An Update on “Independent Women Part I” (But Is That Really A Good Thing?)

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    In 2000, Destiny’s Child heralded the dawning of the new century by unveiling “Independent Women Part I.” On the heels of TLC’s “No Scrubs,” released the year before in 1999, “Independent Women Part I” built on an increasingly beloved notion: women being financially independent of men (who were effectively useless anyway without finances of their own to offer). Although the 1980s and 1990s had seen a glimmer of this in the “working mom” trope or the shoulder pad-packed skirt suit that Melanie Griffith immortalized in Working Girl, the “novelty” of “sisters doing it for themselves” had worn off by 2000, and it seemed time to make more robust strides than merely being a woman “allowed” to contribute to the capitalist machine. Now, women wanted to be truly “independent”—no man, no shared bank account, just her and her bag.

    The tie-in of the song to a movie reboot of Charlie’s Angels starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu was key to not only highlighting the independent women gains made by said gender since the 1970s, when Charlie’s Angels initially aired on TV, but also the fact that women are everyday superheroes. Their ever-changing “costumes” (read: drag) all being part of the many disguises and personas they wear to appeal and cater to a cadre of different people (usually fragile men). And, speaking of “catering,” it seems antithetical that another Destiny’s Child song, “Cater 2 U,” was released as a single five years after “Independent Women Part I”—and expressed a much different message that fundamentally negates Beyoncé’s brand as a “feminist.” But anyway, in 2000, “Independent Women Part I” was a beacon of light. A surge of hope, a boost of confidence. Especially to women who were afraid that the twentieth century might never let them go (and yet, lo and behold, here we are in the twenty-first and things seem much less progressive than they were in the twentieth thanks to, oh, the repeal of Roe v. Wade for a start). Here to help remind women of that pivotal instant (while simultaneously bolstering an unsustainable system called capitalism) is Ciara. Wont to emulate Janet Jackson in the past (see: “Jump”), this time, she’s going for straight-up 2000-era Destiny’s Child as she gets Lola Brooke and Lady London to join her on the “Girls Mix” of “Da Girls,” likely to appear on her eighth studio album along with “Jump” and “Better Thangs” featuring Summer Walker.

    In case there was any question about whether or not this was Ciara’s update to “Independent Women Part I,” she commences the song with the chorus, “This is for the girls gettin’ money/This is for the girls that don’t need no man/This is for the girls that’s in love with theyself/This for all the girls that done did it by theyself/This for all the girls that’s I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T.” Really driving the point home by literally spelling out the connection. And, considering that 2023 already started out with a sologamy bang via Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers,” it’s no surprise that other women in music should keep emphasizing the “trend.” As though independence is a “monetizable moment.” But then, of course it is—just as monogamy has been for centuries (and still is despite “falling out of fashion”). To bring it all back to the current “I can buy myself flowers” perk/emblem of being an independent woman, Ciara even sings at one point, “I wanted some flowers/Mr. Wilson pulled up in a Rolls (skrrt).” “Mr. Wilson” alluding to her husband presumably pulling up with the flowers she wanted—which makes it slightly less independent-sounding. One would have preferred to think of “Mr. Wilson” as a flower delivery service (or even a reference to Mr. Wilson’s flower in Dennis the Menace). That would have at least entailed she can not only buy herself flowers, but have them show up to her house without lifting a finger, too.

    As for the accompanying video, the original favors a certain Billie Eilish in “Lost Cause” vibe (itself a riff on “34+35 Remix” visuals) as her girls come over to hang out, dance around, eat, drink and generally frolic. This is what it is meant when Cyndi Lauper says, “Girls just wanna have fun.” In the “Girls Mix” version, the concept isn’t much changed, swapping out the “rando” women at Ciara’s house in favor of just Lola Brooke and Lady London—helping Ciara (the “Beyoncé” of the outfit) to complete a trio à la Destiny’s Child (or Charlie’s Angels). And for their version of “Independent Women Part I,” Brooke is sure to give a direct nod to Beyoncé by saying, “Gonna rock these pants like a freakum dress,” after which Lady London declares, “This is for the girls on the grind/This is for the girls that done worked full-time/This is for the self-made girls, yeah, the self-paid girls.” It’s all certainly enough to make someone like Betty Draper blush with embarrassment, as though her “reliance” on a man (read: a monogamous situation that reinforces capitalism) is shameful, her invisible labor within the domestic sphere meaningless. But anyway, such women are supposed to be “relics,” right? Nonexistent in the climate of the present.

    Meanwhile, on “Independent Women Part I,” Kelly Rowland (in conjunction with ex-DC member Farrah Franklin, not Fawcett) sings, “The shoes on my feet, I bought ’em/The clothes I’m wearing, I bought ’em/The rock I’m rocking, I bought it/‘Cause I depend on me if I want it/The watch I’m wearing, I bought it/The house I live in, I bought it/The car I’m driving, I bought it.” One can tell how this would also presage Ariana Grande declaring, “I see it, I like it/I want it, I got it” on “7 Rings,” yet another anthem championing female-centric materialism (diamonds, hair extensions, clothes, etc.) as a form of independence. And while, sure, she might be financially independent, she still leans on/plays into the oppressive system that men/patriarchy wield to keep most people in check. Women included. The idea that becoming “independent” means fully embracing capitalism (as any male industrialist would), however, is both naïve and reductive. And it’s hardly tantamount to “equality.” All it serves to do is bolster neoliberal practices by making women think they’re “free” because they have purchasing power. And by fortifying that illusion to other women in a song format, what it really amounts to is more propaganda for capitalism under the guise of “progress.”

    From Grande saying, “My receipts be lookin’ like phone numbers/If it ain’t money, then wrong number” to Ciara repurposing the same flex with, “Bank account look like phone numbers/All of our checks got four commas,” the message is clear: be like a man. Make money. Rely on “yourself.” All while simultaneously relying on the very system that allows oppression to flourish. It’s not exactly “feministic” in the spirit that many women would like to believe. But since the end of capitalism feels unimaginable, perhaps women are just doing their best to work within it while there’s still money to be made before all resources are plundered and life veers into Mad Max territory.

    Ironically, Beyoncé herself had no agency in getting “Independent Women Part I” onto the Charlie’s Angels Soundtrack. It was actually her “dadager,” Matthew Knowles, who submitted the track without her permission/knowledge. So much for, “Try to control me, boy/You get dismissed.” But apparently, being “independent” is overrated when it works to your bank account’s advantage. What’s more, “donating” the single (which was originally supposed to be “Independent Women Part II” released on their ’01 album, Survivor) to Charlie’s Angels isn’t quite indicative of promoting “independent” women, per se. After all, the three women in question aren’t just Angels, are they? They’re Charlie’s Angels. They “belong” to Charlie. And the trio seems to have no problem with that, nor any desire to truly break out on their own, independent of their invisible Daddy figure.

    At one point in the song, Beyoncé sings, “Do what I want, live how I wanna live/I worked hard and sacrificed to get what I get/Ladies, it ain’t easy being independent.” No, it’s certainly not. Especially since “independence” still comes at the cost of fucking Mother Earth up the asshole and acting little better than a man with a burgeoning bank account.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Not Commenting on People’s Bodies Would Eradicate Way Too Many Industries: Why the Ariana Grande Body Shaming Speech Is Ultimately Hollow

    Not Commenting on People’s Bodies Would Eradicate Way Too Many Industries: Why the Ariana Grande Body Shaming Speech Is Ultimately Hollow

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    To exist is, unfortunately, to be perceived. And, in this world, there’s no shortage of people who would like to comment on their perception of you. Being a celebrity takes that phenomenon to an nth degree that no civilian can likely imagine. However, it is (and long has been) considered part and parcel of “the fame game.” For if a person wants to be in the public eye for the sake of disseminating whatever their talent is to the masses, the inevitable fallout is the curse of public opinion. Not everyone is going to “love” you or automatically embrace everything about you, least of all when it comes to appearance.

    Lately, the frequent criticism of fans themselves is that they are not “real” fans if they deign to condemn anything about their so-called god. That’s where the modern fandom-fame dynamic has gone terribly askew. For the die-hard fans (of a Swarm variety) are of the belief that no “ill word” should ever be spoken of the “deity” they worship. This extends to fault-finding of any kind—read: straightforward perceptions of the body. Remarking on if a celebrity has lost or gained weight is at the top of the list (as Britney once put it, “I’m Mrs. She’s Too Big Now She’s Too Thin”). This includes Grande’s increasingly “heroin chic” look. And yes, she was already objectively thin to begin with. Such “objectivity,” however, is something that Grande wants people to feel “less comfortable” commenting on, even if it’s coming from a “well-intentioned” place. Which it was, as what prompted Grande to release a video chastising this form of body shaming in the first place was the barrage of comments that came in the wake of her cameo at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London, where she and Cynthia Erivo went to see their fellow Wicked co-star, Jeff Goldblum (who will be, of all things, the Wizard of Oz), play the piano. Alas, all eyes were focused on her ever-diminishing body shape rather than the music.

    A similar incident occurred in May of 2005, when Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan (then in greater cahoots perhaps because of a shared mutual contempt for Paris Hilton) were photographed looking utterly anorexic as they swam in their floor-length dresses with arms that mirrored those of a starving African child. Cue the onslaught of tabloid headlines. While Richie would later state that her weight loss was a result of stress and anxiety rather than any eating disorder, she still admitted of her 00s self, “I see a girl that is obviously going through something and is much too skinny [and probably on drugs, went the unspoken conclusion].” Lohan, in turn, copped to battling with bulimia (and drug addiction) around this time. Both women had no issue in discussing their bodies or addressing people’s continued concerns about the message their shared (lack of) figure was sending. At the height of tabloid “culture,” maybe it was too “normalized” to be okay with dissecting headlines that dissected one’s body. But, at the same time, Lohan and Richie were in on the joke. And relished the then-revered “skinny bitch” physique. So much so that Lohan even wore a shirt that said “Skinny Bitch” and Richie threw a Memorial Day barbeque that barred guests over a hundred pounds (“There will be a scale at the front door. No girls over 100 pounds allowed in. Start starving yourself now”). Such acts would invoke immediate cancellation in the present, to be sure.

    Left: Lohan lapping up her skinny bitch era before it really happened on the right, with Nicole Richie

    Perhaps because Grande is, in her own way, an honorary member of Gen Z (as a result of her vocal advocacy for mental health), she’s drunk from that Kool-Aid for too long to remember what she truly is: a millennial. Of the Lohan and Richie generation, even if slightly younger than they are. This forming the weird chasm to become part of a microgeneration (something that never needed to exist before everything and “trend” started to accelerate at such a rapid speed due to waning attention spans spurred by the internet). And Lohan and Richie know better than anyone that trying to steer the public away from their opinions is fruitless. If anything, it makes them cling to those “freedom of speech” rights all the more.

    But what’s most glaring about Grande’s “earnest plea” is that she’s trying to tell a society that traffics in the financial profits of various forms of body shaming (including, at the top of the list, beauty products) that they should no longer be so critical. The thought of such an amendment to human (nay, consumer) behavior actually occurring is not only absurd, but entirely far-fetched. Especially within the celebrity-industrial complex that Grande operates within. Not to mention Selena Gomez, another recent victim of the body shaming discourse that led to her own clapback at “fans” (again, as they’re so derisively put in quotation marks when they speak ill of their god) the same way Grande did on TikTok Live. Establishing the blueprint for Grande, Gomez declared, “I just wanted to say and encourage anyone out there who feels any sort of shame for exactly what [you’re] going through, [when] nobody knows the real story… you’re beautiful and you’re wonderful.” Grande echoed the same sentiments with, “You never know what someone is going through. So even if you are coming from a loving place and a caring place, that person is probably working on it. Or has a support system that they are working on it with and…you never know. So be gentle with each other.” She added, “I just wanted to extend some love your way and tell you that you’re beautiful no matter what phase you’re in…no matter what you’re going through, no matter what weight…no matter how you like to do your makeup these days, no matter what cosmetic procedures you’ve had or not…I just think you’re beautiful.” Of course, that’s easy to say when you can’t actually see who you’re talking to.

    As for the specific mention of makeup, it bears noting that both Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez make a large chunk of their profits off that industry via their R.E.M. and Rare Beauty lines, respectively. Whatever the makeup is being marketed as (“inclusive,” “natural,” etc.), it’s still ultimately designed to be used as a tool to mask one’s “authentic” self. For if that’s truly what we all wanted to be, makeup wouldn’t be a billion-dollar industry. Or plastic surgery. Or fashion, for that matter. And, speaking of, Grande is “the face” of one of the most elitist names in haute couture, Givenchy. Also a brand that has long worshipped at the altar of Audrey Hepburn-level thinness (spoiler alert: Hepburn got that thin by being malnourished as a child during World War II). Indeed, Grande is meant to be some sort of “2.0” version of Hepburn’s waif-based poise and elegance. But no, she insists, we should not comment on bodies—even as she proceeds to make much of her bag on the discourse that surrounds them. This, too, cuts straight to the issue that no one’s addressing (least of all a celebrity): capitalism.

    The only reason to comment on bodies and create a “narrative” centered on what’s “hot” and “not” in that “realm” (e.g., Kim Kardashian’s physique usurping the rail-thin one of Paris Hilton’s after the 00s) is because it’s profitable to multiple industries. And it’s not just limited to beauty and fashion. It creates a ripple effect in every facet of purchasable existence—from foods consumed to exercise habits that can be paid for. And it’s something every celebrity benefits from financially. Even the much-exalted Lizzo, who has also entered the chat again as a result of Grande’s video, with people bringing up her own anti-body shaming tirade from January of this year in which she announces, “The discourse around bodies is officially tired.” “Tired” or not, it’s still a source of major income to many involved in the fame racket. And even selling “body positivity” is a part of that. The weaponization of language (such as censoring people from stating the obvious in a way that makes them feel fearful to speak at all), of course, is one of the first steps in fully activating 1984. Yet our society is bifurcating into a separate territory from that Orwellian nightmare as well, one in which the jettisoning of the body seems to be related to the increasing reliance on “uploading consciousness” (as Grimes said, “Come on you’re not even alive/If you’re not backed up on a drive”).

    In a Nightline special addressing Gomez’s defense of her body, an archival clip of Lizzo being interviewed was included as she said, “We as a society have normalized cruelty to a point where we have internalized cruelty.” Again, does everyone need to be hit over the head with the obvious reason why? C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-M. Apparent cuntiness sells. In tabloid-oriented form as much as fashion and makeup form.

    Despite this, an ABC news contributor who appeared on the special, Kelley L. Carter, concluded, “I don’t think people want perfection out of celebrities anymore. I think they want celebrities that they can see themselves in.” Or at least, “the raw material” of themselves. For “fame as a profession” (a.k.a. going viral) has never been more lusted after than it is in the present climate. And if people—“real,” “average-looking” people—can see themselves in a celebrity, then yeah, that’s still a goldmine for the capitalist cause. Which has thrived on body shaming for centuries (see: the below ad as one of countless examples).

    Selling shit by shaming people is an American tradition that won’t be quelled with any hypocritical celebrity pep talks

    All of this talk about “not commenting on celebrity appearance” also plays into the idea that it isn’t safe to say anything anymore, and certainly not to call a spade a spade (i.e., a fat person fat or a thin person thin). At least, in U.S. culture. But imagine telling a culture as hyper-critical and in-your-face as the Italians to keep their comments to themselves. To that end, it was Stefano Gabbana who outright called Gomez “brutta” in 2018. This leading to another conversation about why he should be lambasted for expressing an opinion since, as it is said (often falsely when it comes to selling fashion through models), “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

    Whatever “effect” Grande’s video might have inflicted for a brief twenty-four-hour period in the news cycle, it’s not likely to shift the bottom line: if celebrities truly want to stop the “body shaming” they’re faced with, then the only thing to do is 1) use their fortune to go back in time and not become famous or 2) retreat into the “wilderness” like J. D. Salinger. Or better yet, renounce capitalism to be a truly commendable role model. As both Grande and Gomez have been branded for their stance against shaming…never acknowledging that all shame stems from our collective commitment to prostitution.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Obsession With Marking Time Through Pop Culture

    The Obsession With Marking Time Through Pop Culture

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    In the past several years, it’s become more and more common to “celebrate” (or mourn) the passing of milestone anniversaries for films and albums. This year, the sudden trend has evolved into also taking note of which songs were released, specifically, twenty-five years ago. A.k.a. singles that came out in 1998. Some of the more pronounced callouts in media have been Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time,” Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing),” Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine,” Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?,” Cher’s “Believe,” Christina Aguilera’s “Reflection” and Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic.”

    In 1998’s defense, of course, it was a particularly momentous year for music. And, as usual, it has to be said, Madonna was the one to set the tone for mainstreaming the genre of the moment—electronica—by releasing Ray of Light in March. Cher would follow auditory suit (likely to Madonna’s eye roll) in October of that year with the release of “Believe” and the album of the same name. Where Madonna stopped at suffusing her music with William Orbit-helmed electronica sounds, Cher pushed further by being among the first to incorporate Auto-Tune in a manner antithetical to its original purpose (which was to disguise being off-key). With her unapologetically warped voice singing the “I Will Survive” of the 90s, Cher rang in a new era of musical manipulation.

    Elsewhere, Brandy and Monica relied on the tried-and-true duet method for their chart success (as did Mariah and Whitney with The Prince of Egypt’s “When You Believe,” for that matter—it was an animated movie soundtrack kind of year, what with Xtina’s “Reflection” being from the Mulan Soundtrack, to boot). But perhaps what stood out more than anything about “The Boy Is Mine” was its totally implausible video, wherein we’re supposed to believe The Boy (Mekhi Phifer) was able to carry off the logistical nightmare of fucking two women who lived next door to each other in the same building.

    “…Baby One More Time,” needless to say, stood out for its sound and visual, with Britney notoriously catering to every man’s Nabokovian fetish for schoolgirls by dressing in a Catholic school uniform throughout most of the Nigel Dick-directed video. It was this moment in pop culture history that perhaps signaled the biggest sea change of all from one decade into another. For, although Britney burst onto the scene (and caused men’s pants to burst in so doing) in the 90s, she was a decidedly 00s pop star. The leading example of what that entailed sonically and visually, with the likes of Jessica Simpson, Willa Ford, Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff and, later, even Taylor Swift emulating what Britney had perfected. That is to say, being a “pop tart.” Prancing around in sequined leotards with fishnets and singing “subtly” about sex. Because, in 1998, the United States was still in love with the idea of losing more of its innocence, a desire immediately established in January of that year, when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke. For not since “Dick” Nixon had the nation been forced to see how little trust they should place in the “highest office in the world.” And all because, like most men, he couldn’t resist a blow J.

    So as America continued to deflower itself in a post-internet existence that was further punctuated by the release of The Matrix in 1999, the music and the videos that came with it seemed to reflect this period in American pop culture history more than any other. Even Next’s “Too Close” was a 1998 hit that talked exclusively about a man’s issues with concealing his boner because a woman dared to get “too close” to him. Therefore, “asking for it,” etc. (or, “You know I can’t help it,” as Next insists). This prompting Vee of Koffee Brown to demand, “Step back, you’re dancin’ kinda close/I feel a little poke comin’ through on you.” It’s a song that encapsulates many a junior high dance of the day, when “freaking” was all the rage among the preadolescent set.

    As mentioned, more than the songs that were about sexual awakenings/yearnings, the music of 1998 was dead-set on innovating. This included the aforementioned “Are You That Somebody?” and “Intergalactic,” as well as Fatboy Slim’s “The Rockafeller Skank,” all awash in sounds that would become a retrospective “time stamp” for the era. In general, that’s part of the reason why many people so love to mark time through pop culture. More than one’s own personal life (with memories triggered by certain songs), it is far likelier to offer a historical snapshot of a particular epoch lost to the quicksand of minutes and then years and then decades. The obsession to mark time as a whole, however, stems not from nostalgia, so much as being part of a capitalistic society in which time is literally money.

    If you look up, “Why do people keep track of time passing?” one of the top answers is extremely telling: “Time tracking is key to understanding how you spend your time, personally and in business. It is key to productivity, insight and a healthy workflow. This is equally important to everybody in an organization, or society.” In other words, if you aren’t productive within the capitalistic machine (complete with the purchasing power to support entertainment industries), then what good are you? Do you even exist? That pop culture is also a buttress for capitalism, thus, makes it inextricably linked to that system. Further solidified by how these anniversaries of album and song releases can provide the catalyst for re-releases that will prompt fans and even casual listeners alike to buy the same product again, whether digitally or as a result of being enticed by some “collector’s edition”-type presentation.

    Underlying capitalistic-driven motivations aside, maybe the reason why some are especially gung-ho about marking the passage of time this year by looking back on 1998 in music is because it was arguably the last time a pioneering shift occurred in said medium. With the dawning of the 2000s, hauntology would come to dominate the musical landscape more than anywhere else, complete with musicians like Amy Winehouse and Arctic Monkeys sounding as though they were pulled straight out of the 1960s rather than the twenty-first century. The same could also later be said of such acts as The Raveonettes, Duffy, Adele and Lana Del Rey.

    And when next year rolls around to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of songs like Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch,” Sugar Ray’s “Every Morning” and Crazy Town’s “Butterfly,” we’ll perhaps more fully understand the pinpointable instant when things started to take a dive (compounded by 1999 also being the year Napster was launched).

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Are You Surprised A Visual Effects Extravaganza About Paying Your Taxes and Honoring Family Was the Oscar Darling?

    Are You Surprised A Visual Effects Extravaganza About Paying Your Taxes and Honoring Family Was the Oscar Darling?

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    Triangle of Sadness never stood a chance as a major Oscar contender, of course. And as a skewering of the rich and a society that worships them, it was certainly not going to topple the likes of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Which, say what you will about it, is not some kind of “love letter” to moms (in the spirit of the 1942 children’s book, Runaway Bunny) or “ordinary people,” so much as a thinly-veiled push to accept your fate—no matter how mediocre—make the most of it and, obviously, never try to outsmart/dodge the IRS. Even though it seems like one ought to be able to mentally maneuver around somebody as toady as Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis, who swept up an Oscar for her part in the movie as well), Kafka long ago made it clear that bureaucracy always triumphs. And so do schmaltzy movies at the Oscars—regardless of such movies being masked as “profound” and “rooted in realism.”

    That “realism” begins when Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is confronted at the IRS office by Alpha-Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), another version of her husband from the multiverse. But it’s difficult to focus on what Alpha-Waymond is saying to her about the collapse of every universe while the “voice of reason” throughout the film, Deirdre, a star IRS agent (with the butt plug-shaped Auditor of the Month awards to prove it), keeps trying to bring Evelyn back to “reality,” whatever that means. But to Deirdre, it means reminding this non-taxpayer that “hobbies” are not businesses, and that Evelyn is going to be in some serious trouble if she doesn’t get her story straight with regard to her tax return “narrative.” Notably, Everything Everywhere All at Once’s major sweep of the Oscars comes just in time for tax season—how fucking convenient is that, as Cardi B would say. Because yes, amid all the smokescreens about nihilism and how “nothing matters,” the Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert) ultimately seem to want to remind viewers that nothing is ever so chaotic in any universe as to excuse away not correctly filling out and filing a tax return.

    In truth, the only way to gauge whether or not a bona fide apocalypse has occurred is if people stop paying their taxes and are able to “get away with it.” This tending to refer to something like a The Last of Us scenario wherein it’s irrefutably true that nothing matters, save for basic survival (thanks to the 28 Days Theory on Humans Enduring for No Good Reason Other Than It’s Encoded Within Them). Or, in the instance of Triangle of Sadness, you find yourself in a Lord of the Flies situation, stranded on a deserted island. That’s when humanity in its most unbridled form reveals itself. But naturally, the Academy doesn’t likely care to remind viewers of such “ugly” realities, like “buying sex with the common food” as Abigail (Dolly de Lion) does in her newfound role as leader.

    In contrast, while she was a cleaner on a 250-million-dollar yacht, Abigail was “valueless.” In the rough of the wild, however, her skills (what the Daniels would bill as being part of “competency porn”) are worth everything to the passengers that now depend on her for survival. Paula (Vicki Berlin), the head of staff on the yacht, makes the mistake of trying to treat Abigail the same way she does on the boat, having the gall to ask her after Abigail does all the work to finagle them a fish dinner, “Why do you get so much food? Why?” This question forces Abigail, The Little Red Hen of the outfit, to spell it out by explaining, “I caught the fish, I made the fire, I cooked. I did all the work, and everybody got something.” In capitalist existence, this is simply called a laborer. In Lord of the Flies existence, this is called running shit and everyone else without any viable skills can shut the fuck up.

    When Yaya (Charlbi Dean), the proverbial hot model/influencer of the yacht’s remaining passengers, ends up hiking with Abigail over a mountain to find that they’re actually on an island that houses a bougie resort, the look on Abigail’s face is one of sheer disappointment. She doesn’t want to go back to how it used to be. To the existence, or “universe,” as Everything Everywhere All at Once would bill it, where she’s a lowly peon whose skills are rendered useless again now that money as the sole source of clout has reentered the equation. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Daniels attempt to lift up the working class by spotlighting them as the “real superheroes” in this world. Of course, what would be far more uplifting to them is if they were paid accordingly. Not given some propaganda about accepting how shitty things are and, by the way, keep paying your taxes.

    Perhaps the vastly opposing messages of each film, with Everything Everywhere All at Once disguised as something it’s not, proves that the only side people want to see of themselves is the rose-colored one. With “normal” Waymond saying such dialogue as, “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind.” A more debonair Waymond in the universe where Evelyn is a film star and didn’t up marrying him finds her telling Waymond how bleak it would have been if she had opted for a life with him. As he leaves, Waymond ripostes, “In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.”

    This is what finally warms Evelyn’s heart back up to Waymond in the universe where they do just that, turning her back on the darkness that Jobu Tupaki a.k.a. her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has infected Evelyn with on her journey through the multiverse. Although it seems like Joy might have won with her darkness (and the everything bagel that encompasses it), Evelyn chooses to employ Waymond’s combat style of “killing with kindness” (it was a grave error that Selena Gomez’s “Kill ‘Em With Kindness” was not used at any point during this scene). This, in turn, leads laundromat owner Evelyn to not let her daughter go even though she asks to be.

    Chasing after Joy outside the laundromat, Evelyn explains that she would rather be in this universe with Joy over any other. Joy counters, “[But] here all we get are a few specks of time where any of this actually makes sense.” Needless to say, Joy isn’t referring only to the literal way in which she and her mother have a tendency to tune their being into different universes, but the way in which none of life really makes sense to any of us. Except for those rare moments of clarity we’re meant to get by being surrounded with loved ones and friends during those precious, errant hours of time off from work. Work is what people do, after all, in order to support those around them. Including institutions that profit from (usually underpaid) labor. Especially the IRS.

    “Then I will cherish these few specks of time,” Evelyn assures. As though to say that we all should do the same with vacation weeks and “leisure hours” spent recovering from the horrors of working so that said wage can be gutted like a fucking fish by the government. To act like the Daniels aren’t complicit in perpetuating this inherently flawed cycle, they have Joy announce at the end, “Taxes suck.” But, clearly, you still have to do them if you want to be considered a Viable Member of Society (meaning, ultimately, a law-abiding one—laws being a social construct created by—ding! ding! ding!—the government a.k.a. the rich people that control it).

    Incidentally, the final line of the movie consists of Evelyn inquiring, “Sorry, what did you say?” It’s an appropriate question for those viewers who thought that they had heard something infinitely wise and profound when, at the core of Everything Everywhere All at Once is the longstanding societal reiteration that you must do your taxes and honor the family unit. Not just by never abandoning it, but by making sure that the same “beliefs” are imparted down the generational line. In other words, of course this would get the Academy hard as a rock compared to something as “Eat the Rich” in sentiment as the aforementioned Triangle of Sadness.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Among the Ruins, The Mall Will Tell of What Society Used to Be (And Can’t Help But Remain)

    Among the Ruins, The Mall Will Tell of What Society Used to Be (And Can’t Help But Remain)

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    In episode seven of The Last of Us, “Left Behind,” Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is taken on a late-night expedition to see a relic and wonder of the past: the mall. Even in “non-post-apocalyptic” (so we tell ourselves) America, said milieu has become something of a relic, regardless of remaining a “novelty” to those who didn’t grow up with it as the end all, be all of hangout locations (see: Billie Eilish in the video for “Therefore I Am”). To Ellie, taken there by Riley Abel (Storm Reid), her best friend and former roommate at the FEDRA military school, it is just such a novelty.

    Although Ellie is initially reluctant to accompany her bestie on this mysterious nocturnal journey, Riley soon makes good on her promise of it being “the best night” of Ellie’s life. Which, yes, is a testament to how bleak things have gotten. After the two sneak into the complex where the endless slew of shops is housed, Riley sets up the majesty for a first-time viewer of the mall by telling Ellie to go ahead of her and call out once she’s gone through the hallway and turned right. When Ellie announces, “I’m here, now what?,” Riley turns every light on in the place to reveal the beautiful embodiment of capitalism in all its decayed glory.

    Ellie, usually unimpressed by just about everything, stares out at the commercial abyss in stunned wonder. A classic case of being glamored by the bells and whistles of capitalism. Almost like an Eastern bloc defector in the Cold War creeping into America to see what all the fuss is about. To paraphrase what Ruben Östlund said during most of his interviews promoting Triangle of Sadness, “Capitalism won over communism during the Cold War because it was sexier.” In short, Reagan had the snappier quotes (e.g., “Socialism only works in two places: heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it”). And, talking of quotes, one thing Östlund actually did say during an interview was, “Capitalism is so good at exploiting all our needs and all our fears, where we live, our food, and makes money out of our creativity and everything we do.” In other words, it knows how to seduce better than Peitho.

    Watching Ellie unwittingly absorb capitalism’s neon seduction without appearing to be aware of or understand its detriments makes it all the more facile for her to become enamored of “the way it used to be.” That is to say, before the overrunning of the Earth by fungally-controlled zombies. And, as Riley assures her, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” we can see that’s very true when Ellie is additionally wowed by the mere presence of a working escalator. Although Riley had only planned on billing four aspects of the mall as “wonders,” she chooses to call the escalator one as well, seeing how much it dazzles Ellie. The second is a merry-go-round, the third is a photobooth (typically overpriced at five dollars) and the fourth is the arcade—particularly meta seeing as how The Last of Us is based on a video game. But the game referenced in this episode is Mortal Kombat II, which Ellie has a poster of in her room at military school.

    When Riley confesses that she’s leaving Boston that night for good (stationed elsewhere by the Fireflies she’s joined up with), Ellie, in her state of sadness and rage, nearly opts out of the fourth-turned-fifth wonder of the mall: the Halloween costume shop. Unable to repress her lovelorn feelings, she goes back into the bowels of the mall when she hears a scream she assumes is coming from Riley, only to find it’s a sound effect of one of the props in the costume shop. The two then proceed to find love in a hopeless place, as they both give in to the romance that only capitalism can furnish, even in its “dormancy.” Kissing each other after Etta James’ “I Got You Babe” ends, one might say it was all the proverbial “wining and dining” Riley did that got Ellie to finally surrender to her true feelings. For, even in the post-apocalypse, girls just wanna be shown you care through material things (like volume two of a pun book).

    Which is perhaps why the most depressing aspect of “Left Behind” isn’t that Ellie and Riley will not have a happy ending after at last admitting their affection for one another, but that the allure of the mall (and all it represents), in spite of being theoretically defunct after an apocalypse, will not die. Its metaphor lives on (for you can’t kill an idea, etc.). This ultimate emblem of consumer culture can still manage to hypnotize and seduce people. Even if it’s a person who doesn’t know any better about the effects of capitalism—you know, the ones that ultimately lead to things like the level of global warming that can cause a fungal infection to adapt to body temperatures and become hospitable in humans, thereby creating the post-apocalyptic state in The Last of Us in the first place. That a ravenous zombie ends up attacking them in the final scenes feels only too poignant as well, considering that ravenous zombies were (and are) the primary clientele of the mall in its heyday.

    Leading one to ask, from within the context of the show: was it really “better” then, when places like the mall functioned to make us all feel as though we were “civilized” members of a “society”? Or should the one benefit of a post-apocalypse be that you don’t have to feel like you’re still constantly being brainwashed to “want” useless things (like, as Ellie and Riley point out, lingerie)? Then again, considering Ellie still has to do pre-apocalypse shit like PE, it seems unclear what, exactly, is meant to truly differentiate our current climate of societally-imposed expectations and misplaced obsessions from a post-apocalyptic one.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Better to Have a Constant Sense of Dread Than Be Dead (Or Is It?): Noah Baumbach Revives White Noise at a Moment We Need to be Reminded of Our Inherent Doom

    Better to Have a Constant Sense of Dread Than Be Dead (Or Is It?): Noah Baumbach Revives White Noise at a Moment We Need to be Reminded of Our Inherent Doom

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    A long-held fear is being dredged up in the artistic output of late. The one that Woody Allen made an entire career out of before everyone suddenly remembered his 1992 sexual abuse allegation. That fear, of course, is death. “The march toward nonexistence,” as Babette (Greta Gerwig) phrases it in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel, White Noise. It’s a “march” we’re all told we must face, sooner or later. No matter how many advancements in medical care and plastic surgery, or how much money one has at their disposal to stave off Death for as long as possible.

    For a while, it seemed as though our collective society had forgotten about death… at least as a muse for artistic inspiration. Or perhaps it had become too much of a cliché to keep bringing it up in art. Plus, the more recent obsession with the carnival of horrors known as modern politics is what’s been keeping most artists preoccupied with regard to what shows up in their work. Yet that general sense of anxiety always leads back to one core fear: it’s all going to end. Both for the individual and the world at large. To that point, Baumbach is here to remind us of what DeLillo (and every other writer) has been saying since time immemorial—by adapting the author’s most well-known (and possibly most beloved) work. And, although not similar in caliber or subject matter, another recently-adapted novel from Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is In Trouble, evokes the same sense of middle-age-related doom and gloom. As Toby Fleishman (played by Jesse Eisenberg in the limited series) puts it, “This is what our ancestors died for: the right for us to be middle-aged and bored and miserable.” And yet, despite this misery, not seeing death as something to be welcomed, so much as feared. With the ultimate fear always being the unknown—for that allows the human mind to build up fear to a much more intense, debilitating level.

    In the decade when White Noise was released as a novel, the advent of American society’s own sense of “settling into middle-age” was at a peak: Reagan was president, the suburban “dream” was still a sought-after “ambition” and yuppie “culture” reigned supreme. By the same token, the postmodern “affliction” was crystallized by the arrival of MTV, with its “scandalizing” imagery that peddled—in the eyes of such pearl-clutchers as Nancy Reagan and Tipper Gore—sex, drugs and sin. Even though the latter was married to “liberal” Al Gore, she was known for being especially upset by Madonna (then in the height of her “Like A Virgin” vixen days), declaring, “Popular culture is morally bankrupt, flagrantly licentious and utterly materialistic—and Madonna is the worst of all.” Perhaps she took “Material Girl” too literally? A song, incidentally, that ironically mocks the Decade of Excess through a video that finds Madonna rebuffing her male suitors’ promises of diamonds and furs and other assorted trappings of wealth in favor of a simple bouquet of flowers. Appropriately, this song also came out the year White Noise did, a book hailed as the “cornerstone of postmodern literature” (sorry Less Than Zero). As such, it’s only natural that White Noise should exist within the timeframe of the 1980s, when the American population naively assumed the information-action ratio couldn’t ever possibly get worse. Little did they know… The Internet.

    The eighties were also distinct in offering some of the first thoroughly modern instances of just how much technological “snafus” could wreak havoc on the average joe—and the environment (see: the Exxon Valdez oil spill). But more than that, there was an overall aura of contempt for authority spurred by decades of disappointment brought on by the perpetually lying U.S. government (a trend that persisted in the 80s with the Iran-Contra affair). Maybe that’s what stoked a brewing rage within the quiet and complacent. The American ilk that so love their car crashes because they just want to watch something burn, if not the world itself. This could be why Baumbach chooses to commence the film not with the scene of station wagons dropping their kids off at College-on-the-Hill, where Jack “J.A.K.” Gladney (Adam Driver) works as the chairman of the Department of Hitler Studies (this being a dig at the rise of “novelty academic intellectualism”), but rather, with a lecture from his colleague, Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle).

    Echoing the machine-fetishizing themes J. G. Ballard presented in Crash (another novel that’s become increasingly prophetic/relevant of late), Siskind tells his students, “Don’t think of a car crash in a movie as a ‘violent act.’ No, these collisions are part of a long tradition of American optimism. A reaffirmation of traditional beliefs and values… Think of these crashes like you would Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. On these days, we don’t mourn the dead or rejoice in miracles. No, these are days of secular optimism. Of self-celebration. Each crash is meant to be better than the last.” As Siskind’s montage of ever-advancing and escalating car crashes is shown on a film reel to the class, Baumbach offers us a shot of a car exploding and its nuclear-esque mushroom cloud reflecting back in the glasses of a rapt student.

    This hard-on for watching crashes—a.k.a. the suffering and death of others—is part of a unique form of schadenfreude that only materialized in American culture with the dawning of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, itself a type of “white noise” after a while. Indeed, the reiteration of the distinct types of “postmodern” white noise are mentioned often in DeLillo’s novel, replete with phrases like, “There is an expressway beyond the backyard now, well below us, and at night as we settle into our brass bed the sparse traffic washes past, a remote and steady murmur around our sleep, as of dead souls babbling at the edge of a dream.”

    With all the noise and clamoring for attention brought on by media oversaturation and conspicuous consumerism, everything seems and sounds like “dead souls babbling at the edge of a dream.” And every “cataclysm”—rendered so meaningless from constant replays on TV—is reduced to mere “event.” Especially that of the environmental catastrophe variety. This being why, during the segment called “The Airborne Toxic Event,” Jack is quick to dismiss Babette and their children’s (most of whom are from Jack and Babette’s previous marriages) fears of what the “feathery plume”-turned-“black billowing cloud” might do to their well-being. To him, the thought of it actually affecting him and his family is so remote, he assures Babette, “These things [read: negative effects of chemicals wreaking environmental mayhem] happen to people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up, I mean sadly, in such a way that it’s the poor and uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters.” “It is sad,” Babette replies in her obligatory white guilt manner. Jack adds, “Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods?”

    Alas, even those formerly comforted by the theoretical cocoon of their white privilege, like the Gladneys, are slowly (oh so slowly) coming to grips with the reality that, since the continued use of 80s-era business and consumer practices, the environment has lately offered us nothing but the same energy we’ve been giving it for too long in return.

    So it is that the fear of death in the postmodern 80s (complete with “incidents” such as the Chernobyl disaster) has been compounded in the present by being among the first generations to see truly apocalyptic climate change phenomena signaling the potential extinction of humans. A double layer of fearing death. And yet, in the face of humans knowing that pretty much everything they do and love is a threat to the very environment that allows them to live, they still engage in the same behavior. Ergo, the simultaneous fear of death combined with constantly engaging in “death wish” activities centered around the American passion for chemical substances in everything they consume is the great dichotomy of the twentieth century, and now, the twenty-first.  

    Talking of consumerism (as one finds practically unavoidable whether discussing White Noise or not), the unspoken additional main character in White Noise is product placement itself (with DeLillo originally wanting to title his novel Panasonic—obviously, the corporation was not inclined to oblige). This is appropriate not only because DeLillo was a former copywriter, but because products are the “great cultural achievement” of the modern era. A reflection of all the choices we’ve been able to forge for ourselves only to become paralyzed by too much choice all signifying the same end. Coke, Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, Velveeta, Grey Poupon, Tide—everywhere the eye wanders during a scene of the film, there’s sure to be a recognizable brand. This, too, is the mark of our postmodern panic. Our disaffected dystopia. The fact that the things that consume us (under the pretense of us consuming them) exist in liminal non-spaces only adds to the overarching feeling of constant dread. As though we’ve fully realized how to make life as purgatory-esque as possible before that final step into the abyss. Another polite word for “death.”

    All lives must end and “all plots move deathward,” as Jack remarks to his class early on in the film, which is perhaps why the movie and the book meta-ly attempt to avoid full-tilt plot altogether. Hence, the “montage effect” of White Noise that became the norm with the dawning of the MTV generation. So fond of their “slick” edits and apropos-of-nothing jump cuts. Many likely wish that life itself could be experienced that way. That we could skip over the numerous (and primarily) mind-numbing parts just to feel slightly more alive. But without all that “filler” time (so much of which is occupied by waiting in lines—even online… just ask the Taylor Swift fans who tried to buy Eras Tour tickets), we would be edging closer and faster toward death. The “filler” portions of existence are what we’ve been conditioned to believe elongate the life experience—even if hours spent doing menial tasks like making money and then spending it on grocery shopping hardly equate to living.

    The supermarket as a purgatorial landscape outside of time and space was also something many were forced to reconcile with during the lockdowns of 2020, when the grocery store was the only “legal” outing permitted. Further emphasizing that the supermarket is where “life”—this modern non-life we’ve all agreed to—is at its most manifest. It provides everything one needs to live within the confines of the totally ersatz. Which is why it’s only right for White Noise to end at the giant A&P we’ve come to know so well over the course of the film, with Jack stating of it all, “I feel sad for us and the queer part we play in our own disasters. But out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we keep inventing hope. And this is where we wait…together.”

    And with that, the consumers break out into a music video-worthy dance sequence to the tune of LCD Soundsystem’s “New Body Rhumba” (custom-made just for this movie). James Murphy, no stranger to lyrical depictions of existential dread, accordingly mirrors the increased sensation of anxiety and trepidation that arrives with middle-age by singing, “I need a new body, I need a new party/To represent my needs.” A younger body that might help evade the reaper for just a bit longer.

    The “new body” of the future, of course, could lie within the idea of “uploading consciousness.” As Grimes said, “Baby, you’re not even alive/If you’re not backed up on a drive.” In the meantime, there are plenty of products (and pharmaceuticals) to console you, to make you think you might somehow be delaying the bottom line. Shopping, after all, is a supposed means to avoid death. “Buy or die,” as the American-backed “philosophy” goes. Just as it was in the 80s, so it is now. Which is why it’s still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Eras Tour and the Obvious Connection Between Presales and Selling Would-Be Elitism

    The Eras Tour and the Obvious Connection Between Presales and Selling Would-Be Elitism

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    As Taylor Swift reckons yet again with having the kind of clout that could invoke the swarming of various attorneys general onto Live Nation and Ticketmaster, another deeper issue has come to the surface in the wake of The Eras Tour presale. That issue being, well, presales are founded on the very principle that has wrought so much havoc in this society: elitism. The idea that if you assert yourself as being some kind of “VIP” by spending the money to be as such (whether it’s through paying to exist within a fan club or having an American Express), you can get whatever you want. Money buys everything. That’s the “benefit” of capitalism. Especially for pop stars who know the power of their worth to fans in a parasocial relationship with them. No one knows that worth better than Swift.

    Maybe that’s why she included in her statement on the matter in the aftermath, “It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.” Nonetheless, Swift and other performers are left with little choice but to rely on Ticketmaster for their concert ticket sales. After all, the “entity” and its parent company, Live Nation, control roughly seventy percent of the live ticketing marketplace. Something that might have been prevented twelve years ago upon the sealing of the merger, but that no one appeared too bothered by at the time. Nor has the notion of “presales” seemed to vex any ticket buyers over the years. Instead, music enthusiasts ostensibly relish the opportunity to jump ahead in the proverbial queue. It gives them a delight to know that they’re “beating” other fans to some worshipping-in-person punch.

    As Ticketmaster “politely” describes the concept of a presale, they’re “usually sold from a separate allocation of seats, which may not be the same as the tickets being released to the general public.” This implies, of course, that a bulk of objectively “better” tickets are made available to those “elite” ones. Or, at least, the ones who believe in the American concept that class can be bought (something the British are only slowly coming around to). In the case of Swift’s presale, it’s not about having an AmEx card, but a Capital One card. For Swift, like any adept capitalist, is obliged to cross-promote her endorsement deal with said credit card company. And it was this demographic of Capital One cardholders for whom the second wave of presale tickets catered to as Ticketmaster tried again to lead more casual fans down a primrose path to “hell.” Hell to “First World” ilk inferring that they have to stare at a screen and watch the clock count down the minutes as they “wait in line” for their turn to buy.

    Considering the second presale was meant to commence on Tuesday, November 15th, but was pushed back to Wednesday, it’s clear Ticketmaster persisted in its ill-preparedness and incompetence… once again. So much, in fact, that the ticket sale intended for the general public had to be cancelled. Who needs “average” buyers anyway, when one can sell millions of tickets to “special” people without them? And yet, perhaps there wouldn’t be false ideas of “specialness” if presales were abolished altogether. If everyone was “allowed” the same opportunity to purchase concert tickets at the same time, surely the initial bum-rush wouldn’t be so intense as a result of everyone viewing these lots of tickets as inherently better by sheer virtue of being able to choose from them “first.”

    To this end, juggernauts like Ticketmaster are possibly only feeding into what the people “want.” Or rather, what they want to believe about themselves. That they are somehow more superior to others—a more “diehard” fan, etc.—and should be given the divine right to access the best seats before the hoi polloi. By this logic, one could ask if Ticketmaster can fully be blamed for driving the bloodlust for presales. The answer is, if you don’t build it, they will not come. In short, permitting 3.5 million customers to register for the presale hardly makes anyone feel “special” regarding their preliminary access to tickets. And, the way the presale went, it only served to remind that it is forever people with “real” influence who can actually get what they want easily.

    What’s more, Swift is no stranger to invoking political imbroglios, which began when she finally decided to grow a political voice and speak out against the election of Marsha Blackburn in October of 2018, when the U.S. was faced with yet another extremely close midterm election. Evidencing her power to make website usage surge, in the two days after Swift posted about the importance of registering to vote, vote.org saw a spike of 102,000 new voters registering (seventy percent of whom were under the age of twenty-five). And yes, they knew it was attributable to Swift telling her hundreds of millions of followers, “So many intelligent, thoughtful, self-possessed people have turned eighteen in the past two years and now have the right and privilege to make their vote count. But first you need to register, which is quick and easy to do. October 9th is the LAST DAY to register to vote in the state of TN. Go to vote.org and you can find all the info. Happy Voting!” Cue the onslaught of registering voters. But hundreds of thousands are nothing compared to millions, which, evidently, even the strongest of interfaces can’t withstand.

    With Swift’s popularity manifested anew amid The Eras Tour presale, a fresh spotlight was placed on something political. She being the catalyst for politicians to weigh in on a pop cultural matter (even though government and pop culture have been enmeshed for quite some time—*cough cough* Marilyn and JFK). Specifically, the inability of customers to go elsewhere for their tickets making it all the more apparent in this particular scenario that Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with Live Nation constitutes a monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. The insanity of trying to secure a presale seat prompted Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar to remark, “When there is no competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.” And yes, what a “tragic” consequence—not being able to attend a little stadium concert.

    Even the presidential level of government weighed in via a quote that Joe Biden said earlier this year. One dredged up by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who reminded, “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.” Does anyone have the heart to tell Biden that capitalism is full-stop exploitation no matter what? Oh well. There’s no stopping this system until it implodes anyway—and Swift’s presale tickets were yet another harbinger of that inevitable implosion. The patent unsustainability of “everyone” (read: a lotta white folks who listen to Swift) wanting to be “elite.”

    This largely due to the American dream still being peddled—the one that insists each person can have a piece of the “pie.” Just not the Taylor pie. Or any other, for that matter. Because the greatest lie ever sold is that “everyone” can be “elite” when the entire reason the “genuine” elite (a.k.a. those with generational wealth) relish being such is because no one else will actually be “let in.” Ergo making the Ticketmaster fiasco a prime example of middle-class aims turning out to be too relatively lofty.

    Swift might do her best to shirk any blame (what with having a song called “Don’t Blame Me” and only admitting to being “the problem” in “Anti-Hero”), but surely she must have some say in kiboshing such Ticketmaster disclaimers as, “Ticket prices may fluctuate, based on demand, at any time.” For this is the woman who can bring down (or at least bring into question) entire institutions with a single post. Even so, Swift herself isn’t immune to the temptations of “more money,” with Forbes commenting of the ticket sale setup, “Swift could have put Swifties’ names on the concert tickets, set a fair price and turned off the resale market… she did not do this because it would not ‘have been as profitable.’”

    Thus, perhaps as her on-again off-again foil, Billie Eilish, is known for touting, maybe Swift truly believes that, regarding some “catering-to-the-little-people-pretending-to-be-VIP” matters, it’s “not my responsibility.” For music, whether “art” or not, remains a cold, hard commodity in the undiscerning eyes of the “free” market.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Anti-Capitalist Undercurrent of Enola Holmes 2

    The Anti-Capitalist Undercurrent of Enola Holmes 2

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    When last we left Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) in 2020, she had been effectively abandoned by her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter). Yet it was hard to begrudge this freedom fighter the “abandonment” of her child when it was all in the name of the feminist cause. Even if that cause required a bit of explosive violence to get the job done. For, as Eudoria declared to Enola in a letter she left behind with some cash, “Our future is up to us.” Would that the same could be said for women of the working class, which is the demographic that Jack Thorne’s script (Thorne also penned the one for Enola Holmes) focuses on the most. Indeed, it’s the match girls who work in horrific factory conditions that drive the majority of the plot.

    One match girl in particular, Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss), is the force that manages to prevent Enola from hanging up her detective’s hat entirely. For that’s just what she’s about to do when Bessie timidly walks into Enola’s erstwhile office. Which she can no longer afford as there are no clients willing to hire her, either because of misogyny (“Am I addressing the secretary?”) or ageism. As to the latter, she suffers the same kind of commentary as Doogie Howser might endure, with comments like, “You’re how old?” and “Stone the crows, you’re young.” In effect, no one trusts her or takes her seriously the way they do her overburdened-with-cases brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill). Just another bane to living in 1800s-era London. Not to mention being in the thick of the Industrial Revolution’s after-effects. This including treating the worker like shit in the name of profit. Something the match girls know all about, as we see them subject themselves to the “new fever” called typhus in service to the work. Basically what happened during the onset of COVID-19, when some people got to stay at home and others didn’t have the same luxury of “staying safe” due to their class station.

    Enola, who feels it must be kismet that Bessie found a months-old ad of hers floating around on the street, agrees to assist in the search for her “sister,” Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd), a seasoned match girl that’s taken Bessie in as though she’s family at the ramshackle where she also lives with another factory employee named Mae (Abbie Hern). Upon seeing Enola in her abode, Mae snaps, “We don’t need help from people like you,” alluding to the overt signs of Enola’s class. Despite the lack of a warm reception to her presence, Enola goes even deeper into the case by infiltrating the factory as a match girl. Working next to Bessie, she creates a diversion to get into the manager’s office whereupon she discovers missing pages ripped from a ledger. Enola is also quick to notice that Lyon’s matches have only recently turned from red tips to white ones. Surely not a coincidence. And while she feels she’s close to grasping at something, like Sherlock with his own current case, the puzzle pieces simply haven’t come together.

    It doesn’t help matters that Enola still finds herself preoccupied with Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), who was at the center of the caper in the first film. The two continue to awkwardly flirt and semi-court, but it’s clear Enola is the one holding things back in the relationship thanks to the echoes of and flashbacks to the “independent woman”-oriented aphorisms her mother instilled within her.

    Regarding the Tewkesbury romance, although some of the movie posters make Enola Holmes 2 come across as just another Jane Austen or Bridgerton knockoff, the majority of the movie speaks to the oppression of the worker. And yes, Sarah Chapman was a real person, even if not quite so model-esque as Hannah Dodd. Much like the Reform Bill featured in Enola Holmes was based on a real bill called the Third Reform Act. Director Harry Bradbeer (who also worked on the first film) and screenwriter Thorne are sure to use revisionist history to their advantage (though not so freely as someone like Ryan Murphy) in this edition of the Enola Holmes saga as well, with Chapman being at the center of a class war made all the more complex by the fact that she has secretly been dating William Lyon (Gabriel Tierney), the son of Lyon’s owner, Henry (David Westhead). But the web of deceit will turn out to be even more convoluted when Sherlock’s adversary in a battle of wits, Moriarty, enters into the equation.

    Meanwhile, in the midst of her investigation, Enola has managed to get herself caught red-handed in the very manner from which the phrase originated: with blood all over her hands. This resulting in an arrest from the extremely smarmy Superintendent Grail (David Thewlis), who has no qualms choking Enola to attempt extracting the location of Sarah. When Enola insists she doesn’t know where Sarah is, Grail threatens, “Well if I can’t find it out from you, I’ll find it out from someone else. Like her sister, little Bessie.” Taking his meaning for the threat that it is, Enola replies, “She’s just a little girl.” Grail screams, “Oh, but that’s how it starts, Enola Holmes! With little girls like her, and you, and Sarah Chapman. Asking questions. Doubting those in charge, not seeing their protection for what it is, trying to tear it down.” Enola appears as though she might cry, but maintains a stiff upper lip (what all women must do if they want to “play by the rules” in a “man’s game”) as Grail continues, “Well it only takes one little flame to start a fire and my job is to keep crushing those bloody flames out.” Spoken like a beacon of upper management. And also a demagogue/dictator in the vein of Trump or Putin.

    The question is later asked by a certain woman (who shall go unnamed to prevent from unveiling the mystery), “Why shouldn’t I be rewarded for what I can do? Where is my place in this…society?” Many women are still asking that question. Particularly those who must slave away as both a mother and a “paid employee” (as though the slog of motherhood isn’t worth something far more than the type of labor capitalism values). It is this dual role that catches the match girls of Enola Holmes 2 afraid to take a stand against their abuse in the final minutes of the film. An abuse so grotesque that they should automatically walk out without needing any convincing from Sarah.

    But they do. Not just because the manager, a mouthpiece for the “seduction” of regular weekly earnings, shouts, “Think of your families, don’t do it girls. It’s not worth the risk.” And “the risk” he doesn’t want them to take is marching right out of the factory when Sarah urges them to protest with her against the dire conditions she’s unearthed. Informing them, as someone who has finally seen the light about the power of the worker, “It’s time for us to use the only thing we have: ourselves. It’s time for us to refuse to work. It’s time for us to tell ‘em no… I know you’re scared. I am too, but it’s the only power we have!” So here the viewer is given the expected, uplifting Act Three visualization of how “it only takes one little flame to start a fire” (to use that aforementioned match girl pun).

    These, of course, are very pleasant thoughts to console oneself with as Iran arrests and/or puts to death the female protesters who have been called to action in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s own death at the hands of Iran’s “morality police” back in September. Suffice it to say, Enola Holmes 2 won’t be much welcomed in that country. Or really, any other. For they’re all mostly patriarchies that prefer to treat women and the worker like caged animals.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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