On Looking Away

Tags: Abercrombie & Fitch, Alex Rodriguez, BP Oil Spill, Crocs, Heidi & Spencer, Hot Topic, Jersey Shore, John Travolta, Ke$ha, Lebron James, Levi Johnston, Lindsay Lohan, M. Night Shyamalan, Mel Gibson, Miley Cyrus, Most reality TV, Nickelback, Paris Hilton, Snooki

There is a phenomenon I’d like to bring to your attention. Let me explain it thusly:

You are walking through a store (the identity of the store is of no matter). As you’re browsing the aisles making vague consumer choices, you hear the familiar screeching of someone’s wretched offspring. You look in the direction of the noise source, what do you see? You see a parent bending over their child, trying to get the child to stand up, and act as reasonable as someone in a “Spongebob” t-shirt can. Their efforts are fruitless, as is often evidenced. This child is causing a scene. The embarrassment to themselves or their affiliates is of no importance to them. They want something, and they don’t have it. They feel something, and they don’t like it. You watch tentatively. Why do you do this? It is probable you look to pass judgment. Maybe this is the only chance you have to feel good about yourself that day. It’s open ended, really.

So as you watch this family at their worst moment, you wonder what the heart of the problem is anyhow. You listen to the kid, waiting for him to bark his demands. He will probably say something along the lines of: “I want that toy!” or “I’m tiiiiired!” or “I don’t wanna be here!”. So you listen closely for these remarks. When the child finally does say his piece, it is not what you expect. He screams: “Jews are responsible for all the wars, sugar tits!!”. You are flabbergasted at the gall of this statement. You realize that these parents are fostering a Mel Gibson. You are appalled by their Mel Gibson. Why don’t they shut their Mel Gibson up? Why do they let him act like that and say those things?

You finally leave the store and ponder some more about the outburst of that Mel Gibson. Man that Mel Gibson was a racist prick, you think to yourself. You get home to your spouse and begin to tell them the story of the Mel Gibson. You say to them that you had never heard such things from a Mel Gibson, and that the Mel Gibson should apologize. You just won’t stop thinking about the Mel Gibson. As you’re lying in bed you ponder the consequences of the actions of the Mel Gibson. You decide that if it were up to you, that Mel Gibson would not be allowed in the particular store the outburst occurred at anymore. To take it a step further, justifiably in your mind, you believe that he should not be allowed in any stores.

The next morning you jump in your car and drive to work. On the way to work you listen to talk radio to pass the time. The morning hosts have heard about the Mel Gibson incident that you witnessed. They go on all morning talking about it. They pontificate that this Mel Gibson is a disgusting pig, and should be largely ignored. This Mel Gibson should go away. You agree. You go on listening about the Mel Gibson incident for the duration of your commute.

This is the phenomenon. It is the consensus that a certain thing is particularly bad and should not exist/go away, but the communal propulsion of said thing to popularity by the aforementioned consensus. It is the act of wanting something to die, but in essence, giving it it’s entire life force. There are various examples of this. They are as follows: Jersey Shore, Nickelback, Heidi & Spencer, Lindsay Lohan, Crocs, Levi Johnston, John Travolta, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hot Topic, Ke$ha, Most reality TV, Miley Cyrus, Alex Rodriguez, M. Night Shyamalan, and Soccer (seriously!).

The Majority of people hate these things (really!). Let’s look at one example in particular. For the example, I will be using backwash debutante Paris Hilton. Now, everybody hates Paris Hilton. Everybody SAYS that they hate Paris Hilton. But despite these known truths, Paris Hilton gets talked about on various gossip shows, gets tons of news coverage, and makes her way into the canon of Pop Culture with relative ease. Why is this? Well the answer is quite simple.

We will her into existence.

The simple truth that guides the existence of all this horrendous, insubstantial, night visioned, computer corrected, board-approved, expertly edited, meticulously stupid, and last minute makeshift garbage is the unabashed acknowledgement of it all. It is a matter of believing that the boogieman lives in your closet. You made it exist.

To make it clearer, I will provide examples. “Transformers 2” is surely one of the worst movies of all time, but it was one of the highest grossing films of 2009. Because of this fact we have now willed Transformers 3 into existence; a film that is destined to be unintelligible robot garbage. We complain of the constant uninspired, adapted remade bile that Hollywood commissions regularly, but it is our fault for telling them it’s what we want. Every time a bad movie is released (most of the time) we buy a ticket and suckle at the teat of the studios, insuring them that their product is good, even if it’s sour and rotten. Another example is the recent LeBron James “Decision” special. It was an hour long special dedicated to LeBron James’s decision of what team he was going to play for next season. Would he return to Cleveland, or leave town? It is the workings of an egomaniacal master to air an hour long special dedicated to the most insignificant, self-promoting, masturbatory, corporate sponsored fellating moment in recent memory. Naturally, people acted appalled at the idea of it. They scoffed at the idea with all the indignation they could muster. In the end, however, the world tuned in to watch. They made a monster even larger, by looking it straight in the eye and recognizing its horrid existence. If, like in an ideal world, nobody had watched this show, LeBron James wouldn’t be the capitalistic monster we know that he is, but a footnote like he should be.
This is how it is in the current culture climate. It is a strange occurrence to behold. In trying to hypothesize the true meaning of it all, one explanation comes to mind readily. There could be any number of conclusions to be made, but it’s just the one that seems most logical to me.

For some reason, our modern society has an insatiable appetite to have something to hate. I don’t know why. Haters be budding every day. In a world that has embraced irony and is full of people who claim that “sarcasm is my second language” (the people who rank lowest on the humor totem pole), it seems there always has to be something to hate. If there is nothing that has the value or substance of dog shit, then how can anybody be ironic or sarcastic (I.e. superior)?

Now be aware that not everything that is hated is willed into existence as my hypothesis states. Consider the recent tragedy of the BP oil spill. That was an accident of mythic proportions made by a faceless corporation. We didn’t will BP to spill oil; they just did it on their own. Measure this against my earlier allusion to the unfortunate grump of Mel Gibson. We did not will Mel Gibson to be a hateful person; he did it on his own. What it all comes down to is what we decide to look at. As a culture we decided to dwell upon the disaster of BP, which was the right choice. We need to hold the feet of particular entities to the proverbial fire. Our creation of things to hate stems from the insignificant. We don’t need to talk about Mel Gibson for more than five seconds, but we relentlessly shame him as if we are all certified to do so (let he who is without sin something something something). And in doing so, we’ve created Mel Gibson, at least our new image of him. And we must discuss his new image at length. I’m not sure there has ever been a time where art or culture has had such terrible lows as it does now.

And not only are there lows, but there is a populous that seems to be largely aware of it. It is a strange landscape. While there are high achievements, there is the constant buzzing of the low culture somewhere around you. It is a feeling. Someone you pass on the street is talking about how much they hate Spencer Pratt, but subsequently watch every TV show he is ever a part of. It is the simple act of looking away that could quell the smell of putrid reality shows, and ever present “celebs” in the glam media. But that constant buzzing remains. One can only dream of a post-sarcastic world, where we no longer need art to make fun of. If only you could just look.

-Cody Mattox