YOU ARE FREE TO DO AS WE TELL YOU -Bill Hicks
Oh man, my last two posts have made me seem like this bitter old crank who hates popular culture and only goes for "refined" media.  I saw "Talladega Nights" with my family today, and I laughed my ass off, and thought it was great.  So don't get me wrong, I'm not against Hollywood movies....well, I am against Hollywood I suppose, since I'm against the fact that more than half of our media is owned by a handful of CEOs....but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy Hollywood movies or mainstream music....it's just important to know what's behind it all.

I can't even really express anything I mean without a barrage of people being like "WHAT'S WRONG?  WHY WOULDN'T YOU BE ALL OVER THIS SHIT?"  Forget I said anything.  Actually, no, fuck that.  I'm not done yet.

I'm not as hateful as I may sound.  I'm mostly just fascinated.  Fascinated by way a product was sold months before it was even sold.  Think about some other cult phenomenon of a movie...let's say Napoleon Dynamite.  This "indie" film (made by MTV) was a huge success, and everyone was quoting it....then came the "Vote for Pedro" shirts, the one-liner spewing toys, etc. etc. etc.  And so now we have this "pre-emptive strike" of a movie going on.  They're selling t-shirts, CDs, catch-phrases, BEFORE the movie even comes out!  How is that anything but an ultra-aggressive marketing scheme?  They can't lose.  They've created a massive awareness of this product, across the board.  Obviously I'm not immune to it -- here I am yammering on about the movie!

The thing is, these marketing/advertising people are fucking brilliant... they know what we vaguely hip youth want to see....and what do we want?  Bad shit.  Irony.  We LOVE shitty movies.  I do.  I'm sure you do too.  And they're just playing to that....The spectacle absorbs dissent.  We're cynical, irony-driven people, and they spent millions to sell us a movie that gives us just that -- something we can make fun of.   It's the same way a store like Hot Topic can take something vaguely "counter-cultural" and commodify it, to make it seem like you're being badass by buying a 3 dollar anarchy patch or something.  They're always gonna have their test markets and focus groups and shit to find out what we like, and play right into our hands, just to land them the dolla billz. 

I repeat, I'M NOT KNOCKING PEOPLE WHO ARE SEEING THIS MOVIE.  I'M NOT BETTER THAN YOU.  BUT I'M ALLOWED TO BE CRITICAL OF THE ADVERTISERS THAT ARE INVADING EVERY MOTHERFUCKING INCH OF OUR SEMIOTIC LANDSCAPE, GODDAMMIT.  They're not just selling you a product, or an image of a product, but an image of a lifestyle of a product.  And this isn't just Hollywood.  I'm not some zany kook -- there's a handful of people calling the shots for what images we get exposed to.  That's a fact.

I should also say that much of this comes from my basic distaste for anything that's been super-hyped (because I always feel at least slightly let down) and the fact that I've been reading a bunch of Baudrillard and Deleuze & Guattari

Blah blah.  I've just been filled with misanthropy and self-hate lately....join me.