AudioShocker

So I know in my first few columns here that I haven’t been quite as topical as I might be—more or less current, but not as current as I can be—I do aspire to one day being so on the pulse of American Popular Culture as to blog these things as they happen, but until then we’ll just keep turning back the clocks. This time, all the way back to the beginning of September and the Republican National Convention. Specifically, the following video of Rage Against the Machine rocking out acapella for a crowd of protesters (it’s a long video, so I recommend that you fast-forward liberally, watching just enough to become acquainted with its content (like the incredible lameness of the “acapella” guitar sounds everyone makes):

So, wow, it sure is a good thing that RATM got back together this year for the election, huh? If Obama wins, I’m definitely going to credit them for tipping the balance in his favor. But, I’d like to think that its more complicated than that—that I’m being unfair in rather flippantly blowing off RATM’s supposedly politically motivated reunion as rather being a cynical money-grab (though, maybe it’s more just an ego thing, not a money thing - they’re probably the types that enjoy thinking that they’re making a difference). They’re an interesting band, really (what, they totally, like, invented rap-rock, right?), and most interestingly, they’re the one band that I know of that draws listeners from both sides of the American political mainstream most successfully, despite their supposedly inflammatory leftist lyrics. I’ve definitely had jobs of several workplaces where the agreed-upon music to listen to as a whole group was Rage, with the Republican-types generally saying something to the extent of “I don’t really like their politics, but they sure do rock hard!” Exactly! No one has ever given a shit about what they’re singing, so long as it sounded cool (and it does sound cool).

So how can this band, beloved by Republicans and Democrats alike, having additionally always made its albums for major corporate labels (boo! corporate labels! boo!), claim to have some kind of viability as a political force? The liberals that like the music and the words are already liberals, and the conservatives that like the music and the way the words sound will never listen for the content of those words. And they haven’t made any new music, so far as I can tell (I actually went to a Rage concert over the summer in Berlin (it was awesome) and it was just a greatest hits show), so they’ve basically plugged into the just-blossoming ‘90s nostalgia scene as well as sold a bunch of new t-shirts. Do they think they’re helping? I guess so. All I know for sure is that there was no better time than now and no better place than here for them to go ahead and sell some reunion t-shirts.

The detail that annoyed me enough to turn this into a Culturology post is the apparent context of the above RNC video: apparently, Rage had been given a license to play a protest concert at some particular stage nearby to the RNC at a given time. The crowd showed up to hear this concert, but Rage Against the Machine themselves failed to show up on time, and when they got to their venue late, the cops said that it was too close to the curfew time for them to start their concert. I’m not one to side with the police, necessarily, but so far as I can tell, if the dudes in Rage hadn’t been such rock stars about their own “protest” concert and started on time, there wouldn’t have been any problem at all.

And I don’t mean to come off as too jaded or self-righteous about this. Like I mentioned, I did in fact just attend one of their concerts only a handful of months ago. I’m happy they’re playing music again. Audioslave totally sucked. But it just seems foolish to think that Rage Against the Machine (or other, similarly politcally-charged mainstream rock acts (System of a Down also, I believe, thinks of themselves as leftist-types) is or ever was an important political force with the young people of America.

I am also, for the next couple of weeks, going to tack on a few appendices to Culturology, to help you get a better understanding of my point-of-view or frame-of-reference as a blogger interested in the scientifical study of culturalisms. These appendices will be titled “Things that it is Okay to Like.” and “Things that it is not Okay to Like.” Enjoy:

Things that it is Okay to Like

1. The movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Almost without exception. Pumping Iron is one of the most inspirational movies ever made, period—if you’re coming up on an important interview or audition or competition, you just need to think of yourself as The Arnold—Numero Uno—and of all of your competition as Lou Ferrignos, you’ll win, and get to embarrass your opponents in front of their parents as well. And I would argue that no other action star has made as many completely-watchable if not downright entertaining movies as Arnold. Here is what I see as the “Arnold A-List”: Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator, Commando, Predator, The Running Man, Total Recall, Terminator 2, True Lies, and Eraser. Untouchable movies, all of them. And there are plenty of other decent action movies plus some entertainingly-awkward-if-not-actually-funny-comedies in the mix too: End of Days (Arnold gets crucified, fucking rad!), Batman & Robin (some of the greatest corny villain lines of Batman history), Junior, Kindergarten Cop, and Twins.

Things that it is not Okay to Like

1. The movie Donnie Darko. This movie has maybe already lived out a short existence as something of a “cult” film, but I’m worried that there are still people out there that think this was and is a good movie. This definitely, especially when it first appeared on DVD, was one of those movies that had pretty serious hipster cachet, from hipsters that actually grew up in the ‘80s and, like, were totally reminded by Donnie Darko about what it was like to be a kid of the suburbs in the ‘80s (“Pete, how could you hate a movie with such an awesome soundtrack?”) to kids that were alive in the ‘80s but did most of their cultural “growing up” in the ‘90s, but wanted to believe that they grew up in the ‘80s (“Pete, you grew up in the suburbs back then [though, actually, I lived in the city for more of the ‘80s than I did the suburbs], didn’t Donnie Darko, like, totally explode them for you?”). But it doesn’t deserve any cred with the hipsters. What a bunch of muddled quasi-intellectual wanna-be-David-Lynch bullshit. Oh my God, a reference to Harvey, now none of the rest of this shit needs to make any sense (“But Pete, you just have to watch it more—everything totally makes sense, you just need to dig in and figure it out.”). What a waste of time. It perhaps bothers me most because it seems like people that like Donnie Darko could probably enjoy films of merit just as well, and then it wouldn’t be such an issue. We could all just agree that Donnie Darko wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t too good either, and just let it go—they only people out there that are lost causes are those that like both this movie and American Beauty (they are lost causes).