"What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world." ---Jean BaudrillardOh those naive French. If Baudrillard was alive today he'd be rolling around in his grave, trying to get out because the treatise on today's events he could write would revive him to live another thousand digital age. Because we say in the USA have to admit -- as our theater chains surrender and the dominos tumble, that a pair of stoner comedian's idle japing would cascade out to this bizarre event. The closest thing I can think of is BLACK MIRROR, whose devastating 78 minute "White Christmas" episode just debuted, and it makes the nightmare worlds conjured by the first two seasons seem like Candyland. It even puts Jon Hamm through the ringer. Have those Brits no mercy? Is this what happens when you let atheism get in the way of peace of mind? In 'real life' Sony has been extra-dimensionally skewered --a sword sticking through a 2-D movie screen simulacrum--the alleged giant kowtowing to the ornery David while it struggles to shake off the disorientation from being sling-shotted. It's just a dumb comedy, after all. But Americans all implicitly understand that comedy is serious business. This was a time for America, who talks really big while its foe is just a rich fat kid pointing at jeeps on the TV. But when that kid uses the very TV you see him on against you, grabs you right through it and shuts off your lights like Samara in THE RING, then you better show someone else that weird avant garde film she made with her mind, or in this case the reverse, not show anyone the film you made about how her art is pretentious. I mean, a ladder? A woman on the cliff? What is she, Maya Deren? Ooops. I'll shut up. In case she's listening, snaking through the intricate back alleys of the web and on her way towards me. Just to avoid it, here's the video!
What BLACK MIRROR "White Christmas" trades on is more of an eternal Buddhist hell vibe, making the true hell of eternal damnation feel horrifyingly tangible in ways flames and pitchforks just can't match. By contrast, there's no one watching once Samara's victims are taken. They don't have any demon with a sackcloth waiting just off camera to grab their freed souls. I know that because--this we are at this time sure of--Samara Morgan isn't 'real' anymore than Naomi Watts, our post-modern mother of mirrors is really scared of her. Beyond just VERTIGO-style deja vu flashes of being Jimmy Stewart still hanging from the infinite height of the infinite Saul Bass roof gutter, I learned today all about it the true nightmare that's just a couple decades of technology away. It's already too late to even think about going off-grid. You'd only wake the demons with the sackcloths: "We got another runner." Me, I'm going to bed and actually pray. Because in the words of the great Curtis Mayfield, if there's a hell below / we're all / going to go!
Man, though, could he play guitar. "Move on Up" alone should be proof alone we got a friend upstairs. All we need is ears. French intellectuals like Baudrillard can decry our fictive dominance, but if there's one thing we know, it's how to stay funky even as the flames consume us. After all, we have done our share of consuming. It's only fair. BLACK MIRROR! SWEET EXORCIST!
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| On vinyl, invincible |