>The Claremont Institute--PRECEPTS | |
>September 21, 2001
>Claremont Institute Precepts: Generation X Goes to War
>By Julie Ann Ponzi
Having recently relocated to the high desert outskirts of the Southland, not terribly far from where the author of this despicable piece of journalism sits, I thought I'd weigh in with my two cents of kulture kritique:
Ponzi (howzat for a moniker) writes:
>Their hearts are warmed by a
>small number of us -- the serious fans of Rage Against the
>Machine, Julia "Butterfly" Hill, the spoiled rich kids
>dressed in black who travel the world to disrupt WTO
>meetings, and the children of people in Berkeley who, like
>their representative, Barbara Lee, don't see anything in
>America worth dying for.
Ponzi desperately tries to discredit the anti-corporate globalization kids by alluding to the post-modern culture trappings of their mode of dress: "dressed in black." To the contrary, what I have found arresting about the spontaneous outburst of "patriotism" (i.e. national chauvinism) which has flourished in these parts is precisely its "post-modern" (for lack of a better term) cultural form. Today, in what passes for the local "alternative" coffee house, a young woman with tattoos, piercings, a black mini-dress, etc. also sported a butch haircut dyed red-white-and-blue. Yesterday, while in Orange County (admittedly not in the Inland Empire, and long a national epicenter of political reaction), Huntington Beach's "downtown" (basically an upscale outdoor shopping mall w/all sorts of "hip" knick-knack stores, techno dance clubs, etc.) was graced by a parade of monster trucks w/massive "Don't Tread on Me" flags attached, driven by (putatively working class) white young men dressed up in retro-rockabilly outfits (replete with sideburns, tank tops, tattoos, wallet chains, suntans, etc., all right out of a surfer fashion magazine or an MTV video). I thought out loud, fuck, in this cartoonish atmosphere, how can _any_ politics, anti-imperialist, social democratic, centrist, center-right, right, paleo-con, etc. take place ? This bizarre and idiotic display of affluent suburban "rednecks" almost made me yearn for John Birchers in their starched shirts and high water pants, because at least that is not a disorienting sartorial language.
Anyway, my point is that "gutter punk" anarchists hardly have a monopoly on the more odious ways in which culture industry-derived fashion statements stand in for actual politics. If the real-world stakes of looming military campaigns and anti-war organizing etc. weren't so high, I'd be inclined to hazard the Baudrillardesque claim that Fox TV programming ontologically precedes everyday life. But then again, maybe I'm just suffering the customary culture shock an outsider experiences when he/she ventures south of the Tehachapis.
John Gulick