The Art of Being George
| Wed Dec. 17, 2008 1:10 PM PST
THE ART OF BEING GEORGE....In a package called "Art and Culture In the Bush Era," Newsweek asked its cultural critics to pick the "one work in their field that they believe exemplifies what it was like to be alive in the age of George W. Bush." Let's argue over some of their choices, OK?
First off, there are the two TV critics, who practically bent over backward to avoid naming 24. I'm not saying that Battlestar Galactica and American Idol are bad choices, mind you, and I know that maybe it seems a little too obvious for guys who are paid to think nonobvious thoughts about this stuff, but come on: 24 is George Bush's America. Case closed.
Art critic Peter Plagens chose Jeff Koons's "Hanging Heart," but he's wrong. The only possible choice is everything ever manufactured by Damien Hirst, who has made a career out of convincing people to give him fantastic sums of money for stuff that everyone knows is obvious crap — and then lying about it on the occasions when people don't. Read this, for example, and tell me if it doesn't scream "George Bush":
There was the summer of 2007 when thousands of people lined up outside White Cube waiting to glimpse a human skull cast in platinum and covered with 8,601 diamonds that he claimed to have sold at its $100 million asking price. When he was pressed, however, it turned out that the buyer was actually a consortium of investors that included the artist himself; Jay Jopling, owner of White Cube; and Frank Dunphy, Hirst's business manager.
Music critic Lorraine Ali chooses Green Day's "American Idiot." Wrong again. The correct answer is a tie between the insane protest over Dixie Chick Natalie Maines saying "we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas" and Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue." 
Yes, yes, I realize that Natalie Maines's comment is not technically an actual work of art, but we shouldn't let that stand in the way of a higher truth.
The book critics chose The Corrections and Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. Wrong and wrong. In the fiction category, the iconic book of the Bush era is clearly The Pet Goat. Right? The nonfiction category is a little tougher, but I think Jane Mayer's The Dark Side deserves the nod for the book that best represents what Bush and Cheney were really all about. A close second, perhaps, goes to Glassman and Hassett's Dow 36,000, which represents Bush and Cheney's own personal fantasy of what they were all about. Yes, it was written in 1999, but remember that we're going for higher truths here.
The movie critics chose Blackhawk Down and Borat. I guess those choices are OK. But instead, how about the second Star Wars trilogy, another painful reminder that sequels are usually a disappointment?
UPDATE: In comments, PureGuesswork makes a strong case in the music category for Britney Spears: "She spent the last eight years coming up with new ways to fuck up, and now she is worried about her legacy."
UPDATE 2: In the movie category, lots of votes for Idiocracy. Hard to argue with that.
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Comments
"Art critic Peter Plagens chose Jeff Koons's "Hanging Heart," but he's wrong. The only possible choice is everything ever manufactured by Damien Hirst, who has made a career out of convincing people to give him fantastic sums of money for stuff that everyone knows is obvious crap ? and then lying about it on the occasions when people don't."
Nah, Koons is a better choice; his kitsch-as-irony was tired, fake and cliched from the get-go.
Hirst was a shocking, groundbreaking artist in his early work (cf. "A Thousand Years"). His stuff has become derivative because he's overmarketed himself. Akin to Blair, maybe, but not Bush.
Submitted by Linkmeister (not verified) on Wed Dec. 17, 2008 1:12 PM PST.
How about the song The Dixie Chicks wrote and recorded in response to the uproar, "Not Ready to Make Nice?"
How about The Shield? Vic Mackey thinks he can use any means necessary to repress the LA gangs, but because he's unwilling to defend any of his actions, he goes to great lengths to cover them up---eventually spending more energy and time on the coverups than on the actual crimefighting. Sounds like Bush on a small scale to me.
Vic actually managed to do some good once in a while (amidst a great deal of bad), though, unlike Bush.
I would suggest for the fiction category, James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. A work of fiction, cheerfully swallowed whole until the lie at the heart of its conception became too unwieldy not to question, at which point the whole shoddy edifice crashed under its own weight.
Yeah. That sounds about right.
For books, isn't it obvious Kevin?
"A Million Little Pieces", by James Frey.
Hyped by the biggest in the business, bought by everyone, and it turned out to be a complete and utter fabrication.
If that's not the Bush era in print, I don't know what is.
Submitted by J.G. Stewart (not verified) on Wed Dec. 17, 2008 2:04 PM PST.
We need some more parameters here... are we looking for art that exemplifies how we commie liberals felt about the Bush era, or how the Bushies perceive themselves? It makes a big difference.
Never seen 24, but BSG is IMO an excellent pick. Funny thing is, my conservative friends love it as well--they just take the opposite meaning out of every situation. Just like in real life.
Submitted by Ferrari (not verified) on Wed Dec. 17, 2008 2:29 PM PST.
scott_M, I'd actually argue more for Taxi to the Dark Side.
Looking back, nothing better brings back the sense of being trapped helplessly in post-9/11 bizarro America(when W's approval ratings hit 90% and he was routinely being compared to Churchill) than rereading the comic Get Your War On. It's easy to forget now how deranged that time was and how desperately I needed GYWO's obscene outrage.
"Art critic Peter Plagens chose Jeff Koons's "Hanging Heart," but he's wrong. The only possible choice is everything ever manufactured by Damien Hirst, who has made a career out of convincing people to give him fantastic sums of money for stuff that everyone knows is obvious crap and then lying about it on the occasions when people don't."
Nah, Koons is a better choice; his kitsch-as-irony was tired, fake and cliched from the get-go.
Hirst was a shocking, groundbreaking artist in his early work (cf. "A Thousand Years"). His stuff has become derivative because he's overmarketed himself. Akin to Blair, maybe, but not Bush.
Submitted by justinslot (not verified) on Wed Dec. 17, 2008 3:04 PM PST.
BSG isn't a bad choice at all, but it's more about post-9/11 America than Bush's America (and I don't think that's a distinction without a difference.) 24 is a celebration of Bushism so it probably should get the nod.
Two more nominees in the music category:
"Have You Forgotten" by Darryl Worley. Ranks right up there with "The Angry American" in terms of Merkin Country Craptasticism. "And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout Bin Laden / Have you forgotten?" Um, who said we shouldn't worry about Bin Laden? Oh, that's right... GWB did! ("I truly am not that concerned about him.")
"Bush Was Right" by The Right Brothers. It's like a Fred Barnes audiobook set to the tune of "We Didn't Start the Fire." I know these guys are nobodies, but man, they deserve a lifetime whoopin' for being 200% wrong about everything.
"Blackhawk Down" is about the Clinton Era.
Plus, it has Orlando Bloom in a very brief appearance as Private Blackburn, whose unfortunate fall from the rappel started off the whole botched operation.
Where is the Auto Bailout?
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Chrysler LLC announced late Wednesday that it is stopping all vehicle production in the United States for at least a month.
All 30 of the carmaker's plants will close after the last shift on Friday, and employees will not be asked to return to work before Jan. 19.
It's just like Hurricane Katrina, Heckuva job Bushie DIDN'T get the autobail done on Monday, not Tuesday either, not otday, so here it is almost Thursday and still not automaker bailout.
If indeed Nancy Pelosi knew her power, she would threaten Bush (and Cheney) with impeachment if they don't get the lead out by Friday.
For a song I'd say its TV on the Radio's 'DLZ', hands down:
Congratulations on the mess you made of things;
On trying to reconstruct the air and all that brings.
And oxidation is the compromise you own
But this is beginning to feel like the dog wants her bones saved
You force your fire then you falsify your deeds
Your methods dot the disconnect from all your creeds
And fortune strives to fill the vacuum that it feeds
But this is beginning to feel like the dog's lost her lead
This is beginning to feel like the long
winded blues of the never
This is beginning to feel like it's curling up slowly
and finding a throat to choke
This is beginning to feel like the long
winded blues of the never
Barely controlled locomotive consuming the picture
and blowing the crows, the smoke
This is beginning to feel like the long
winded blues of the never
Static eplosion devoted to crushing the broken
and shoving their souls to ghost
Eternalised. Objectified.
You set your sights so high.
But this is beginning to feel like
the bolt busted loose from the lever
Never you mind
Death professor
Your structure's fine
My dust is better
Your victim flies so high
All to catch a bird's eye view of who's next
Never you mind
Death professor.
Love is life,
My love is better.
Eyes could be the diamonds
Confused with who's next
Never you mind
Death professor.
Your shocks are fine,
My struts are better.
Your fiction flies so high,
Y'all could use a doctor
Who's sick, who's next?
Never you mind
Death professor.
Electrified, my love is better
It's crystallized, so'm I.
All could be the diamond
Fused with who's next
This is beginning to feel like the dawn of a loser forever
This is beginning to feel like the dawn of a loser forever
This is beginning to feel like the dawn of a loser forever
Submitted by ahab (not verified) on Wed Dec. 17, 2008 5:27 PM PST.
The fiction selection should be Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature for it in 2003 even though it was published in 1980. Thanks entirely to George W. Bush.
Submitted by mg (not verified) on Wed Dec. 17, 2008 5:35 PM PST.
No film better defines Bushism than did 300. It used cutting edge technology to put out a simple, dishonest message; had an unreliable narrator (like we have our inept press corps); reeked of suppressed homosexuality, much like the Republican Party is loaded with closeted gay baiters; celebrated violence and superficial manliness; was pretty to look at but essentially without substance; wildly, immoderately, grossly over the top in presentation; oversimplified jingoism; a hypocritical take on religion: there is no one film that better sums up what Bush's era has been about. The analogy breaks down in only one important way: the movie represented a competent piece of filmmaking for what it was, and as such, achieved its goal of making a lot of money. But in all other ways, it's perfect for the Age of Bush, and I'd argue no such list can possibly be complete without it.
Gotta approve of Star Wars. Not so much because it was a disapointing sequal, but because it really was about Bush.
It was all about someone falling sway to the dark side (Cheney as emperor), using external threats to corrupt the republic, and wars to distract the populace.
Essentially, episode 3 matches our reelection of Bush, since it is the culmination of using fear to seize and hold power.
But Team America and Idiocracy are a close second. Ow my balls indeed.
OK, Add one of my close relative's family to the list of those breaking up over financial stress. Husband's job gone, 401(k) down by over 1/3. Too much to handle, and the 10-year-old son is taking the brunt.
Enron America. Ponzi patriotism.
Submitted by Crissa (not verified) on Wed Dec. 17, 2008 7:44 PM PST.
I'd choose Todd Goldman, who ripped off web artists by rebranding their images as his own - selling millions of dollars in merchandise and even doing showings in museums.
Of course, my previous comment was held by the system and never approved ;-; That's what I get for linking to wiki, apparently.
Another vote for A Million Little Pieces.
It has everything. The huge central lie, the lesser "macho" lies (dentistry w/o anaesthetic, rescuing the girl from the crackhouse etc.) Plus, the central character is a spoiled, drug & drink wasted rich kid who, with the help of wealthy powerful friends and family, finds salvation and wildly undeserved success as a lying dry drunk. With Frey's eventual exposure as a complete fraud and subsequent pariah status, the parallels with Bush & the Bush era make it the quintessential work of the period.
Submitted by Emphyrio (not verified) on Wed Dec. 17, 2008 9:38 PM PST.
Hey, watch Fahrenheit 9/11 again. It was a great, brave, brilliant movie.
Remember Bush's speech to "my base," the "haves, and the have mores"?
Also, it forever preserves the Pet Goat footage (some of it) for future generations. Iconic.
For television, I would nominate "The Colbert Report." The media is the story of America's failures. I would say "Sicko" for Movies. Idiocracy is the near future. For books, one need only look at some of the fawning Regnery trash, or anything by Coulter.
For art, how about the collective works of Thomas Kinkaid, whose self-congratulatory, smug crapitude glorifies the "real America" that Bush, McCain, Palin etc. are always gassing on about": that gauzy place in the "heartland" where no one ever thinks, reads, or commits any equally subversive act. The kind of little towns where "community organizers" would be run out of town on a folksy wooden rail. The mass-produced pictures even have phony backlighting reminiscent of Bush stagecraft.
". . ., how about the second Star Wars trilogy?"
A better choice than you might think. Plot of the Star Wars prequel trilogy: The leader of a democratic government takes advantage of an attack on his republic in order to gain dictatorial wartime powers. He makes himself emperor.
Also consider the plot of the first Matrix film: Everything you see and hear, everything you think you know, is an illusion enforced by white men in suits. A few individuals, most of them people of color, see through the illusion.
In art, Koons and Kincaid sum it up perfectly. Is there a photograpy category? We seem to be moving toward Dorothea Lange for that one.
For television, Survivor sums it up for me. A bunch of talentless clowns, with the most shameless, self promoting and devious ones always winning in the end.
In the book category, a nod to Victor Davis Hanson's retelling of the Peloponnesian War, A War Like No Other. Almost every page contains parallels between Athens and the U.S. foreshadowing of the inevitable failure of the Iraq adventure, yet Hanson apparently missed every one of them. I kept thinking "how could he have written this and continued to think Iraq was a good idea?" Although I suppose the title is a clue he might miss that ...
24 reflects what Bush and his minions thought life was. BSG reflected life more as it was, in all the shades of glorious gray where just because you're fighting the bad guys doesn't make you the good guy.
For movies: Children of Men. Maybe V for Vendetta as a possible future when democracies succumb to fear.
