Fake Love & Plastic Jesus

I want to talk about the opening article in Chuck Klosterman’s book, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs. I will try not to steal too many of his ideas (or present them as my own) but his writing is insightful and hilarious and worth elaborating on. I encourage everyone to read his stuff. It’s pretty amazing. In fact, you can preview Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs at www.powells.com and read the entire first article, which I will now try to sum up.

Klosterman opens Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs with an essay called “This is Emo” about what he calls “fake love,” (probably inspired by me & my ex girlfriend). He states, “The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy.” This is because we are overtly influenced by the songs we listen to, the movies and television we watch, and (for a minority of us) the books we read. John Cusack sums it up perfectly in High Fidelity:

“What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

Most art that is distributed through media is also designed as entertainment. Much, if not most, art and entertainment are conceptually based on love and relationships (a love song or love story), but manufactured to meet consumer needs (and demand). Movies, tv shows, songs and even books are too often based on ideals, written with narrow perspectives and carried out by actors, singers or the like (often more concerned with how they look and how much they will make than with realism or truth of human experience). And although the love stories portrayed through art have universal meaning, they do not represent love universally and that’s an important difference to understand. How can they? They are born out of unique individual experiences, created by artists hoping to become celebrities and distributed by businessman hoping to make a buck. Thus, the production and distribution of “fake love,” that is, idealistic, fictionalized accounts of love for the consumption by the masses, is manufactured in order to evoke a feeling that sales, sales its artist and makes a monetary profit.

So, how does this affect life as we live it? As Klosterman says, “Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake. Every comparison becomes impractical. This is why the impractical has become totally acceptable; impracticality almost seems cool.” This affects us entirely, including the emotions we think we are supposed to feel and how we’re supposed to express them (this has gotten me into plenty of trouble). When you fall into a relationship both partners in that relationship ultimately measure it against this prospect, the prospect of fake love created and distributed by the media. Klosterman calls this media devolution. He says, “It creates an archetype that eventually dwarfs its origin,” and uses this example: the Woody Allen personality has far greater cultural importance than the man himself. Woody Allen made it hip for sexy women to sleep with nerdy, intellectually witty guys. Although this seems great for guys with wide rimmed glasses and a little wit, it is actually bad. This is sexual misdirection caused by the mass media. “It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want.” And as Klosterman says, wanting to sleep with someone for intellectual reasons is no deeper than sleeping with them because of the car they drive, the clothes they wear or the job they have (and probably hate). And so, in this age of media devolution art and life have become completely interchangeable. In fact, they have become inseparable.

Okay, enough ripping off Klosterman’s ideas. Read him yourself for more insight. It is highly worth it.

This brings me to a question posed by a reader of this very blog: “Why is it that when I try to watch the news all I see is OJ Simpson?”

OJ Simpson can be considered a symptom of many things: power of the celebrity or of the wealthy, the flawed justice system, race relations in America, American obsession with the celebrity (more specifically, the celebrity downfall), and much more I’m sure. What I think Simpson is most a symptom of, however, is the downfall of journalism, which is itself a symptom of the fact that American culture is in decay.

Network television creates programming in order to appease the demands of advertising agencies that create advertisements to appease consumer demand. You can make the leap and say that networks, therefore, create programming to feed consumer demand, but the middleman cannot be ignored. Advertisement agencies have great influence on the type of media content that we consume as Americans. They understand the viewer better than the networks that create the shows because they tell us what to think and what to buy, how to dress and what to eat, what movies to watch and why, etc, etc.
Televisions news as well as newspapers and other news outlets are produced in order to offend as little people as possible. That’s because television/other media outlets (and media consumption) in this country have become a way of life for most people. And most people (certainly most Americans) don’t want their way of life shat on, walked on or disturbed in anyway. This way of life represents modern American culture. It is lazy, it is consumer oriented and it is comfortable. Americans have become too comfortable, too secure with their culture. Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “tradition becomes our security and when the mind is secure it is in decay.” And with it, our values, our capacity and desire to grow and learn (and evolve) and even the very defense mechanisms that keep us safe. This is because modern American comfort is fake.

Let’s look at a recent top news headline from cnn.com: “Oprah asks Justin about Britney.” We all know to whom this refers and most of us know, at least vaguely, what it’s about. Even if you don’t pay attention to pop culture and even if you try hard to avoid celebrity news (as I do, despite what you might think), you still have an idea as to what this is about. Because we all know why pop stars appear on the Oprah show (to jump on couches and gossip but really to enhance their celebrity status) and we all know the questions she tends to ask. And we all know that Justin Timberlake once dated Britney Spears and that Britney Spears is a weirdo. The question is: Why do we give two shits? And why do we label people “weirdoes” when we don’t even know them? Even if you despise celebrity culture and could care less about Britney Spears, when you read a headline with her name in it, you inevitably think, ‘what has she done now?’ This is true for all mega celebrities whose fame has grown not as a result of their accomplishments but as a result of the attention given to them by the media, generally concerning their personal life. Does this sound at all like OJ Simpson?

This is because the media has turned spotlighting celebrities’ personal lives into entertainment. Hollywood Insider & ET are just glorified reality shows. Thus, Britney Spears the artist/musician/entertainer/super-celeb (whatever you’re willing to call her) and Britney Spears the southern blonde virgin/mother of 1, 2, 3 (who can keep count)/human being are inseparable. She may have control over her actions as a person (arguably), seemingly writing her own reality script as she goes, but the media controls how it is edited (what is shown and not shown) and the viewers judge what it means and how her actions define who she really is. This is stereotyping and prejudice at its worst level, a level that is endorsed and embraced by most of our society.

Going back to how art and life have become interchangeable; this simplifies our uniqueness as individuals because we base everything we do, how we act and how we feel, on not only songs, movies, books and television, but on the media’s number one reality show, “The Stupid Celebrity.” But really it’s the stupid, naïve viewer for not realizing the effect of a drug they are not only consuming, but also paying to be produced. The reason OJ Simpson is the only thing you can find on the news right now is because he has just won American Idol (celebrity addition) for the second time and Americans are eager to see what prize he will win this time. I call it the OJ fix, for more reasons than one.

It is my opinion that media does to culture what speed (the drug) does to the teeth. For those of you who are not familiar with the 1994 Green Day song, “Geek Stink Breath,” here’s a recap: “I'm on a mission, I made my decision, To lead a path of self destruction - A slow progression, Killing my complexion, And it's rotting out my teeth - I'm on a roll, No self control, I'm blowing off steam with methamphetamine - Don't know what I want, That's all that I've got, And I'm picking scabs off my face.” Yeah. And that was just one of their B songs!

For those of you not quite deep enough to understand Billy Joe’s complex and philosophical lyrics, I’ll be blunt: Our culture is in decay. It is in decay because our tradition has become irrevocably tied to media and this has given us a false sense of security. We have become too comfortable and every single successful society (empire) in history has fallen when it has become too comfortable. Because it is a false sense of comfort.

It reminds me of the plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of your car. Here are some lyrics to the song, as performed by Paul Newman in the 1967 classic Cool Hand Luke, for those of you so deprived: “I don’t care if it rains or freezes, Long as I got my plastic Jesus, Sitting on the dashboard of my car… Comes in colors pink and pleasant, Glows in the dark cause it’s iridescent, Take it with you when you travel far. Get yourself a sweet Madonna, Dressed in rhinestone sittin’ on a, Pedestal of abalone shell… Going ninety I ain’t scary, Cause I got the Virgin Mary, Assuring me, that I won’t go to hell.”

The idea that a plastic replica symbolizing your religion’s comfort (or in this case, safety) is going to save you (literally or spiritually) from a car accident (or going to hell) is as ridiculous a human invention of faith as I can imagine. Paul Newman’s character in Cool Hand Luke spends the entirety of the movie talking to God and questioning his faith and his existence as a unique human being. His unwillingness to conform to the rules society has opposed upon him ultimately lead to his demise. His plastic symbol of faith and comfort are of no help.

Whether it’s fake love, plastic faith or devolved media, our culture has to, once again, stand for something more meaningful. And I don’t mean the occasional great movie that also becomes a hit (Eternal Sunshine). I mean, something significant that appears in daily aspects of our media, outweighs everything else, encourages progressive parents to allow their kids some media influence and teaches unprogressive parents not to use the damn television as a babysitter. I’m talking about media that ignores sensationalism and prejudice of even our wealthiest citizens and promotes embracing love in our relationships as a unique feeling in regards to that relationship in all its beauty and despite its imperfections, and without reference to Phil Collins, Sex and the City or When Harry Met Sally.

Now, I’m not saying that love songs and love stories and all media are all bad. I’m as big a fan of Sleepless in Seattle and “Unchained Melody” as the next guy. But our media outlets have got to start opening up the conversation as to what media is doing to us (is designed to do to us). As long as there is debate there is education and as long as there is education the mind will grow and adapt and defend itself from comfortable security and devolution. So find a new day job Mary Hart and Mark Steines (hosts of Insider or is it ET), the media is coming back to the people!