Eminem, gangsta capitalist, or capitalist gangsta

Rob Schaap rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au
Fri Feb 23 00:24:19 PST 2001


I find myself pretty much in impressed agreement, Daniel. Although I'm not sure that such characters would feel much short-term pain during that transition - offense is, at the end of the day, the thing they're selling. Many 'high-culture' 'artists' seem to be measured purely on the degree of unsettlingness of their products these days. Unsettling it might often be, too, but in a thoroughly decontextualised, and hence quite meaningless, way (ie the pooing on the gallery floor example of a coupla weeks ago).

We're in the age of spectacle's triumph over meaning, as Jameson sez, and this is the only way it can go. That relates the new Nascar tracks to M&M to PissChrist to Madonna to Benneton ads to XFL to Pulp Fiction to the fact people are actually seriously considering McVeigh's request to whatever 'reality' fabrication Fox will bring us next to the implosion of society.

A lion eating a Christian is a spectacle for a week or two, but everybody knows you're eventually gonna have to have someone (preferably a relative) publicly violating the Christian first, after that mebbe someone doing the lion first ... and then, eventually, well, afterwards, I guess.

After that you can up the scale of brutality, debasement and carnage for a while. But all the while you know there'll be a crisis point, unless you can properly develop and reward ever more deranged minds to meet the ever more exacting requirements such demand management generates. Of course, computer technology will help there - you'll be able to show stuff that's so off it's physically impossible ...

Anyway - economists'll be on hand to talk about the expression of revealed preferences, the utility function of putting criminals to good redemptive use, and the importance of the industry to economic growth and the funding of public services (a salient cost centre in which will be to keep the rate of criminality up to industry requirements).

The new Rome is sadly in need of some new Visigoths.

Cheers, Alaric the Remickian



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