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I am confused. Which posting are you complaining about? Or are you generally confused by the sites self description?
I have to admit to being a wwtdd junkie, along with thesuperficial.com and others. I guess its what happens when you have too much free time at work.
But the site is generally very funny, and also spot on in tearing into the Hollywood glamourati.
May I also suggest for good Hollywood inside news, http://www.iwatchstuff.com/
I think JB’s point is that Tyler Durden wouldn’t do that web site.
This reignites my age-old argument against Fight Club. The whole movie was contradictory unto itself. It speaks out against capitalism/consumerism, yet produce a movie that is highly packaged and sold. I know some would say that’s the irony. To them, I say, “fooey.”
It’s funny that you say that…because as much as I love Fight Club, it does seem counter-intuitive to put out something as a major release with those themes…it’s the same reason I’m not a Rent! fan…
oh jesus, rent, really? Too produced, eh josh? The problem with this is saying that that certain themes are relegated to certain mediums, and that is fooey.
In this reality, how does any idea cross any cultural barrier? If you produce an idea, but determine that it can only be expressed in a certain way to a certain group of people, then the idea is by definition stagnant. It is only by placing subversive, or simply different ideas in mediums in which they don’t “belong” in which mores, thoughts, concerns–anything reallly, changes.
What you both are arguing against is diversity of thought–but don’t let me be too heavy-handed.
The seondary problem with this is that you are both arguing in a singular text environment. If we were to consider that Fight Club, the Brad Pitt vehicle, were to lead one to read the book by Chuck P. and thus create an audience for a unique (post)modern literary voice do when then find value? If someone then decides to watch Primal Fear does this substantiate the claim? Pop culture matters b/c it is so damn pervasive, that doesn’t mean that subversive ideas can’t live within it.
Forgive me, I have been reading a lot of Chuck Klosterman, and that cat believes in the power and value of pop more than anyone I have ever read.
Chuck Klosterman, eh? Would I be interested? And by that I mean does he write anything for the masses (and what should i read) or does he write dense academic stuff (cause I don’t need anymore of that). It certainly sounds intresting..
Good Point…I just don’t like rent…
But, based on your second premise, it’s OK for me to be hopelessly addicted to the National Enquirer because it might cause me to see The Dukes of Hazzard movie which then causes me to listen to Willie Nelson which causes me to read about biodiesel which causes me to think about using it in my Hummer?
My problem with Rent! is that I’m supposed to like it because it’s a commentary on AIDS and it’s affect on the New York poor…while those themes are there, I could argue you should see High Fidelity because it’s a commentary on how being a record snob will make you a loser…
Granted for a lot of suburbanites it was an “eye-opening” experience…
I think the concern I would have with Mr. Klosterman’s assertions is that it gives a free pass to pop culture. For every 1 person who saw Fight Club and agreed with its themes, 3 people saw it and where disgusted, 2 people only really liked the parts where Brad Pitt was running around without a shirt, 2 people still can’t figure out why there was so much shooting and 2 people went out and started their own Fight Clubs where they beat the shit out of each other in the name of connecting to authenticity (you can rent their videos if you’d like). So while it work for that 1 person, there’s another 9 out there not getting it. And that’s predicated that you saw Fight Club instead of Coyote Ugly…
So what are we arguing? Those who have a prediliction for the ideas will still take those ideas, but the question I was addressing was that pop culture can disseminate ideas that would not be spread otherwise or to certain segments of the propulation, that is the value.
I don’t make the assertion that all information or all pop culture is of equal value, but who decides value anyway? If reading the National Enquirer leads to making sound ecological decisions, then what is the problem?
I agree that Klosterman gives pop culture a free pass, but that is b/c he doesn’t assign value and in fact often addresses issues apolitical. His favorite band is KISS. I still ask, why is it bad that the 1 person learned something?
We aren’t arguing…it’s called academic discourse
I think that the point of the discrepancy (right word?) comes via your first point. Those that have a predilection for the idea will consume it while the others will not swallow the red pill. But what I’m saying is that while the 1 person pulls out those concepts, 9 don’t, of which 2 have fallen into a pillar of typical masculine behavior. Also, given the predilection, wouldn’t that 1 person have picked up those thoughts along the way? For those of us that like Fight Club, couldn’t we argue that we already had those ideas and the movie just verbalized them? Therefore, the 1 out of 10 argument is good for the 1, not the other 9. Sorry if this seems frustrating, but the 1 argument gets used in teaching a lot…hell…I’ve used it. “If 1 person understands what I’ve done, then I’ve been a success”….maybe…or maybe I need to try harder to figure out how to talk to the other 9…
Or maybe I just talked myself into a huge loop…damn…
So let’s talk lowbrow. Or counterculture. Or something good like that. Who/what do you dig?
I really like the author Jim Goad. He’s about as un-coopted as one can be and still be on amazon. He is full of wrath, and intelligent enough to say why. The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats is killer good. One reviewer wrote, “I kept wondering how it ever got published.”
Kids, I just can’t say enough about this guy. Very different and very good is his autobiography, Shit Magnet: One Man’s Miraculous Ability to Absorb the World’s Guilt, which he wrote in prison.
I haven’t yet read his Jim Goad’s Gigantic Book of Sex. In fact I didn’t know about it until just now. Looks like a hoot. Maybe less violently angry than the last. Review: “found a job writing for a free weekly devoted to the city’s sex industry. That experience provided grist for this book, a self-help miscellany with a hyperactive design that veers from The Onion-style parody … to confessional essays (”Pleasuring Myself in Prison”) to product tests (Viagra, porn) to anatomy lessons (”In search of…the Prostate Gland”).”
What would tyler do indeed….
Well friends, he wouldn’t be using the internet for social discourse. He would use it to break into the bank accounts of the top 10% of the population and siphon off the money for evil, instead of good. Many a baby seal would be clubbed and all those fun and friendly manatees would be made into ashtrays…
If you take a look at the process of adapting that particular book into a movie you can see that it’s like playing the telephone game with 350 people. It’ll never come out how the first person intended it to.
In the entertainment industry (in particular) this is true due to the predominately held notion that ever single person, from key grip to director feels like they need to put their “personal touch” onto every aspect of the flick.
wwtdd.com is just one more extension of this process.
here you have some painfully bored and lifeless blogger who happens to like brad pitt who then happens to blog about the very thing that the book was actually raging against. There’s the fucking irony folks, turned on it’s head.
Distortion of a pure idea homies. Regardless of the medium or influence of pop culture, that’s what this really boils down to.
“Is that what a man looks like? Self improvement is masturbation. Now self destruction, well…”
Ok, is this a social good argument or a utopian argument?
Is the blogger you or me?
That, my friend, is a scathing response, nice work.
I would say that the movie is very reflective of the book not in how it said or demonstrated things in the exact same way, but rather pushed the boundaries in similary ways in different mediums.
I keep coming back to that word; I believe Marshall McLuhan. What are you trying to accomplish: utopia or change? (what a wonderful–grammatically speaking–paragraph.)
I find your perspective on the “entertainment industry” really interesting. You have no doubt been closer to these “realities”. Or for fun, “(re)alities.”
Hell of a response!
Must check on Goad, I believe I will just go order them.
Good, ’cause I bought a Klosterman (IV).
Hmm. That sounds like the Ikea version of a farm implement…