January 23, 2003
A Slice of Apathetic Pie
A Slice of Apathetic Pie
l like living in my bubble. Sometimes escaping is healthy, ignoring the world around you and just living your life, enjoying simple pleasures. I'm quite good at it. And when I've settled into my comfort zone of the mundane; polishing chrome on a new old car, planning food for the Super Bowl, grocery shopping and dry cleaners, mowing the lawn, rearranging furniture, snarfing around online and playing silly little games ... suddenly something thrusts me out of my bubble and forces me to think, to act. Because if I don't do something, if I don't say something, perhaps no one will. And next thing you know, you won't be able to say anything. You've passively let your rights, freedoms, and yes, responsibilities slip away and you no longer have any control.
It could be an email suggesting my town is too gay, or perhaps reading the morning paper about another gay bashing, or the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the frightening realization that we are thisclose to losing the right to choose, or the deaths of Morris Kight and Sarah Pettit. It could be a post on a friends blog that forces me to address my own apathy as we teeter on the brink of war. Even an email from my wife that quotes John friggin Cusack, of all people, expounding the definition of kitsch and applying it to the state of the union:
John Cusack was interviewed about an upcoming flick he's in where he plays an art dealer to Hitler, before Hitler's rise to power.
"Even faced with Hitler's anti-semitism, Max calls it "kitsch," which is the worst sin he can imagine. There's a wonderful book called "The Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age" by Modris Eksteins which defines kitsch as easy beauty without consequences, superficiality. But when applied to politics and taken to its extreme, he says, kitsch is the mask of death. Fascism was all aesthetics. There was no core principle to it. There was no truth to it. Even the idea of a master race, where was this blond, blue-eyed Aryan quality they talked of? They were all just creating it. When aesthetics become an end in themselves, you have kitsch, this sentimental vision with no ballast. Kitsch is more dangerous than it looks when taken to the extreme."
Do you think American politics today is kitsch?
"It's all aesthetics. And even the people who are covering politics don't question whether that's right or not. They just tell you, "Bush is doing a wonderful job of convincing people he is compassionate." It's a very successful con job. We've stopped questioning that it's all theater. We all know it. It's just disgusting. One day Trent Lott says what he says about the South and lo and behold the next day President Bush is reading to multicolored children at the White House. It's just pure theater; it's kitsch."
I used to be an activist. I'd be the first out the door if I heard the was a march or rally and I'd lose my voice screaming for people to get "out of the bars and into the streets" as we marched through San Francisco. I used to wheat paste posters in the middle of the night. I was arrested at the Nevada Test Site. I remember the last "No War for Oil" protests and El Salvador, Bad Cop No Donut, Kill Your Television and Take Back the Night.
But now... now I have a house and taxes, I have a family and I live in a very white bread suburban community where people just don't march. I'm 15 years older and I'm jaded and well... I'm just not very angry any more. Sometimes I shrug my shoulders and think... what can you do? The world will keep spinning whether or not I write a letter. And yeah, the revolution will probably be televised, right after the Super Bowl.
Posted by MJ at January 23, 2003 09:51 AM
