Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #48

Happy 2023 to all that is based and cringe...

THOUGHTS

May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall! – Aleister Crowley

I’ve never made any new years resolutions beyond perhaps the noncommittal declarations of “2023 will be the year I get in the best shape of my life” and such. I made such a declaration in late December but it was hardly much of a challenge to make, especially given the PEDs that I started indulging in the use of in 2022 (the aging process is real and I’m coping and seething through it in my own way, may you judge at your own peril.)

But it’s deeper than that, I think. It often feels like a new year’s resolution to complete a certain goal is just a new year’s resolution to guarantee yourself some kind of neurotic complex that makes attainment of that goal far more difficult than it would be if you approached it with a clear mind and an open heart. 2021 and 2022 were, by far, the biggest years of my life in terms personal achievement and growth: two books published and a third one written and ready to edit, a marriage, a steady growth in the brand awareness of my projects, and even some celebrity endorsements (as corny as it feels to write that, it’s also weirdly true.) And it still feels like I have so much more to do and have even more life to live. It’s a cliché, but I believe that love comes to those who least expect. I also believe that achievement comes to those who are specific about it. The specificity of a new years resolution can fade out the possibilities of sharpening your discipline and putting it out into the world when you see fit. It can make you laser focus on the micro and close you off from the macro. This, my friends, should be avoided.

So, my only resolution for 2023 is to remain malleable and open. To allow the possibilities of the future to wash over and embrace me. Dreams are potentialities, and sometimes it’s the dreams that you’re not having that are most likely to come true. Keep up the discipline and the practice and the execution. Let it take you where it might. A forced existence is a stilted one.

BASED SAFETY

Let’s start 2023 with everyone’s favorite fascist-dressed, commie-minded Slovenian industrial band. Laibach, who put out a perfectly good record in 2022 and are a year away from their 40th anniversary, grant an interview to Palladium to (collectively) speak on making avant-garde art in an occupied country: “Of course, Slovenia is occupied—what country or place on Earth isn’t? Today, occupation is the natural state of things.” With all the tar thrown around around about the Azov Batallion and Nazism in the Ukraine, that coming from both liberals who like to pretend Azov stopped being Nazis to justify their support of the war effort AND from those who aren’t supportive of Ukraine but still misunderstand the complexity of these geopolitics, Katya Sedgwick’s history on the rise of Nazism in Ukraine becomes essential reading.

Two perspectives on what I believe to be among the best two or three films of 2022, Todd Field’s Tár, from literary figures iconic and on the rise alike. The rising Emmalea Russo finds in the film an excellent satire that deconstructs the horrors of maintaining literati-approved greatness. Meanwhile, Bret Ellis watches Tár a second time and recoils at how wrong he was in his initial assessment of its worth: “this is the best American movie in years.” Speaking of Bret, the written edition of the novel that he verbally annotated on his podcast over the course of 2020 and 2021, is finally hitting bookstores (and Amazon). In a review, novelist Rob Doyle says that the published edition of The Shards is as vital a work as anything the aging Gen-Xer has ever published.

It appears that with the arrival of his solo show at Jenny’s, his first in New York since 2019, friend of SP Mathieu Malouf is back and making the art world worship at the alter of his lurid genius, or whatever! Don’t believe me? Well, refer to the NY Times then, whose Travis Diehl celebrates Malouf’s work here. It does seem a little strange that they call him “the young artist” given that the wigga isn’t that young (sorry amigo), but maybe this how you get a real second chance! May the past be memory holed and may we be young again? Hallelujaz, Hallelujaz! My friends at the Art of Darkness podcast produce a stirring rendition of Artaud’s To Have Done with the Judgement of God. Samuel Finlay writes a touching ode to the under historicized film by Paolo Sorrentino, The Great Beauty. I also find myself surprised at how accurately Will Sloan dismantles Noah Baumach’s appalling and disastrous adaptation of DeLillo’s (one of a few) masterpieces in White Noise: “In the end, we learn that if nothing is real and death is inevitable, we must try to at least believe in each other—a point far lamer than anything DeLillo wrote, made worse by the thick Danny Elfman score lathered over it.”

I just finished the longest manuscript of my life so not much to report on my end, but I did do SOME shit over the course of my brief and relaxing hibernation. First, I appear on my friends J. David and Kelby’s show Agitator to promote my new book, The Safety Propaganda Conceptual Manifesto for Psychological Warfare. We were also supposed to talk about Takashi Miike’s new series but I found it so bad that I had little to say about it. More on the manifesto, my collaborator, comrade and publisher Lev Parker joins System of Systems by Safety Propaganda to discuss that project as well as ideology, philosophy, politics, bodybuilding, the brilliance of Bezos, performance enhancing drugs and golf. Finally, the real show stopper: Billy Corgan, you might have heard about him from his band The Smashing Pumpkins that sold a no big deal 30 million albums and defined the sound of rock n’ roll for an entire generation, joins us on SOS by SP for a fascinating conversation that dives into his new record ATUM, fatherhood, being at the zeitgeist when pop culture mattered, being someone that an industry can’t manipulate, and ROCK N’ ROLL GODDAMMIT!

We made it my brothers and my sisters, we making it further and farther than our forefathers (–Alex Bienstock.)

CRINGE PROPAGANDA

I know I’m a bit late on this discourse, but holy fucking shit is this new Sight and Sound poll some bullshit feminoid revisionism or what? Well, it appears that BFI has extended its juror panels to not just the greatest critics, who often did their best to select the OBJECTIVELY best made films in history, and filmmakers, who brought to the lists their own senses of fanciful and idiosyncratic tastes, but also to seemingly anyone who has been involved in the act of pointing a camera at some humans and having them act out a scene at any point in history. Because, Citizen Kane: who could argue with that? Its influence is undeniable. Hitchcock’s Vertigo? Maybe not as obvious a selection as Welles’ masterpiece, but it is arguably Hitchcock’s greatest work, and Hitchcock is the most influential artist in cinema. So, no complaints there either. But, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman? Are you fucking kidding me? Even if we grant that it’s a decent film, which sure it might be, shouldn’t THE GREATEST film of all time one that occupies a substantial place in the cultural lexicon? Shouldn’t more than a few critics and feminazis with PhDs be the ones to have seen it? Shouldn’t we CARE about it more? Yes, we absolutely should. This is revisionism at its worst. If they want the film industry to be less male and less white, then fine, they can work on that for the next century. But rewriting cinema and history to be more accommodating of women despite their relative smaller achievements in the industry is the thing of rank hypocrisy. Also, Beau Travail (which, admittedly, I like a lot) and In the Mood for Love (which I fucking loathe) in the top 10? Are you wangstas smoking bath salts?

As Nan Goldin basks in the glow afforded to her by recent crusade agains Big Pharma and its role in the opioid crisis as well as its documentation in Laura Poitras’ recent film All the Beaty and all the Bloodshed, you’d do well to be reminded that Nan was one hundred percent supportive of both Covid vaccines and lockdowns. Nan, who I admit is a legitimately great artist, remains blinded by her generational allegiances to the left of liberalism, refusing to apply her accurate analysis of the role of Big Pharma in opiates to its obvious correlate role in the covid vaccine scam. SAD! AX Mina, occupier of one of the lowest IQs on a staff full of the lowest of IQs in all of arts journalism, writes about Julian Rosenfeldt’s narrowly and hallow “anti-capitalist” performance production Euphoria with her own hallow “anti-capitalist” essay. But why quote Marx or Debord in your anti-capitalist screes when you can quote much more contemporary revolutionary figures, like former stripper and admitted date rapist Cardi B and “capitalist to the bone” Pocahontas Warren, to bolster your case? Nikita Kadan, the Ukrainian artist and probable nationalist who has been elevated by the globalist art world over the last year as a propagandist for the war effort (although, I admit, his actual art is rather interesting to look at, dare I say, even a bit fascist?), chastises the Western art world for its hallow rhetorical support of Ukraine in Russia, demanding more MATERIAL support. But NATO, of course, has given Ukraine hundreds of billions in weaponry, so in reality Kadan is making a thinly veiled argument in favor of what our forefather Boyd Rice eloquently describes as TOTAL WAR. A very useful example of the culture industries’ role as a propaganda mill for Western imperialism: chaos, mayhem and bloodshed sold as emancipation. Speaking of barely encrypted imperialisms, Ben Burgis explains why Lula’s victory in Brazil is a win for the global left – which, if you take the global left to mean the IMF and its interests, he’s absolutely correct.

Condé Pitchfork bestows Beyoncé’s Renaissance with its album of 2022 title, and then has some of its lowbie writers explain why the record deserves such status (from what I remember this was the first Beyoncé record that felt rather muted in the reception it received? whatever): the album, according to Julianne Escobedo Sheperd, the album is a grand celebration of black queer club culture, to which I ask: what the fuck does Beyoncé have to do with either queer or club culture? Harmony Holiday, quite the name, explains why Sza, who took half a decade of rest and relaxation after becoming “SO TIRED” after the release of her first album in 2017 and during which time she seemed to get surgery and chill, is the new Sade, who dominated the business for the better part of a decade with relentless work ethic. I wonder what signifiers are leading Holiday to make this comparison? Hmmm…. I wonder….

For some reason, the Quietus columnist JR Moores, who I’ve never thrown dirt at personally, uses his “best noise rock of 2022” column to talk some jive at ya boi, claiming that my affinity for Trump and Corgan is due to apparent shared “male pattern baldness,” which is weird because I have a lot of hair. All of it, really. Well then… Moving on. Imagine my expression when I click on a link about perhaps my favorite photographer of all time, Boris Mikhailov, only to suffer through the writer using low IQ Hito Steyerl’s neoliberal critical theory to illustrate the artist’s import. BUMMER! Finally, I simply refuse to believe that AO and Manohla are THIS PSYCHED on Jordan Peele’s films. Like, c’mon, they’re not very good!

ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Sigils for new beginnings
2. Mathieu Malouf “The Engineer”
3. art by Nikita Kadan