Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #41

This Week in Based and Cringe...

THOUGHTS

Yes, the fear of its blankness. At the same time, I kind of loved it. Mallarmé was trying to make the page a blank page. But if you're going to make the page a blank page, it's not just the absence of something, it has to become something else. It has to be material, it has to be this thing. I wanted to turn a page into a thing. – Vito Acconci

BASED SAFETY

Though I’m going to elaborate upon this in a longer text coming down the pipeline, Otessa Mosfegh’s rousing success and attainment of status within the highest echelons of the mainstream fiction world are the greatest signs of hope for literature over the last 10 years. When she first achieved name brand recognition, I was justifiably skeptical. This was the same industry that had launched the careers of 1000 mediocrities over the 2010s and before, and I’d come to the (mostly correct) belief that anyone who breaks into the New Yorker-approved literature scene would be a conformist with little of anything interesting to say. But then I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Mosfegh’s 2018 novel, and couldn’t put it down. Not only was the novel terrific, it was provocative, and provocative in a way that few of Mosfegh’s mainstream supporters understood. It was profoundly misogynistic, pessimistic, and brutal. I read her whole bibliography. Loved it all. And now, Mosfegh’s latest, Lapvona, is here. I’ll quote this headline: “Lapvona’s cacophony of gore and depravity would make Shakespeare blush.” So much gore. Rape. Ugliness. And yet: not a hint of ideology, progressivist sentiment, or worshipping of black people or trannies. What is going on here? How did Otessa do it? Is it just that she’s a woman of Middle Eastern descent that allows her to remain teflon from the ideological fervor of her contemporaries? Has she mastered a potent, crypto-transgressive literary style? I think so. “My characters do tend to be interested in self-delusion, and I think that’s because so much of our reality is delusional,” says the writer in this interview.

Writers David Leo Rice and Chris Kelso edit this new anthology, Children of the New Flesh, that features writers like Brian Evenson, Blake Butler, and Gary J. Shipley waxing poetic on the influence and power of Cronenberg’s body of work. I’m of course upset that I’m not in it, but would never let my personal feelings get in the way of spotlighting something cool (just kidding, I am the pettiest wigga on the planet). Travis Jeppesen has always been a rare note of intrigue in art criticism, and I’ve enjoyed all of the writing that he’s done reporting from his academic stationing in Shanghai about what’s happening in the arts here, this new piece on a Shanghai techno legend no different. Despite the atrocity that is Tom Hanks’ performance as the Colonel, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic does exactly what it should: reignite the flames of a new generation’s worship of the king of rock n’ roll. Though I am worried that Austin Butler and Elvis’ ghost are making me gay, I can’t deny the power of the first big budget, spectacle driven Hollywood hit in a decade. “In each era, Elvis, for one reason or another, whether he’s relevant or being relegated into a bubble, offers a great prism through which to understand what was going on in America,” says Baz.

Podcasts. Two great episodes of the Perfume Nationalist: first, Glen Rockney talks with Jack about almighty Black Sabbath in this very long episode, and second, Alex and Jack chronicle all manner of materials related to pornographer Jamie Gillis, such as Peter Sotos’ work with the sleaze king. It’s all great listening. Next, Anna K joins Zach to talk about Kim K and other things on I’m so Popular. Onto some political content (yes I’m getting bored of writing these round-ups if you haven’t been able to tell all ready). Ed Prideaux writes about the astroturfing and dangerously utopian corporatization of psychedelic drugs, and it makes sense to me. I like drugs but don’t think any of them should be worshipped as consequence free spiritual elixirs. They are drugs. Acid, shrooms, ayahuasca: all of them leave you fucked out of your eyeballs and losing grip on reality. They’re interesting and great fun, but the neoliberalization of said chemicals is grotesque: “There is perhaps no psychedelic feature that couldn’t be captured and marketed: nominally-radical notions, like encountering hyper-realistic entities and God Himself on DMT, become news copy and advertisements to entice clients.” And as fucking garbage has WSWS has become in the Covid era, it seems that a few of their writers still understand foreign policy better than most: this piece on Ukraine is fantastic, especially the fictional letter that the writer claims would be written by Joe Biden if he were even nominally honest on this issue.

And in the obligatory graf of self-worship, our audio misinformation arm System of Systems produces two art-centric episodes in the last week: New York based artist and tattooer Will Sheldon and Detroit based artist Maddie Kuzak both join the show to talk about an assortment of things. Finally, I produce a sequel (of sorts) to my first Compact Mag column “The Case Against Aesthetic Castration” with an article worshipping John Currin, the master painter who always refuses to succumb to the tendency towards aesthetic castration.

CRINGE PROPAGANDA

In his paranoiac bodily fear of contracting Covid into his clearly ailing corporeal shell, Zizek has been increasingly disappointing for a few years now. And still: nothing could have prepared me for the day that Slavoj Zizek, who has a long history of rejecting libtard ideas and once made the proletarian case for embracing Trump in 2016, would become a NATO shitlib. Nevertheless, the day is here. Zizek justifies his war pig stance with all the war pig libtard party line sand humiliates and discredits himself forever going forward. He’s made his choice. He’s with them now.

In another case of disappointment, Aris Roussinos, one of the less than handful of journalists I’ve had any respect at all for these last few years, profiles a member of the far right Ukranian militia Right Sector — which formed during the CIA-led Maidan coup that transpired as a reaction to Ukraine’s then pro-Russian government — and attempts to discredit any such labeling of the Right Sector as “Russian propaganda.” Aris doesn’t push back the slightest when the militiaman claims he’s only a sweet little innocent “Christian conservative,” but the clearly depicted soldier sure seems to have a lot of fucking occult skinhead tattoos for a guy “averse” to Nazi ideologies. When a soldiers says his only ideology is “killing Russian bitches” I think one has to inquire further about these people’s actual beliefs. Collapse of critical inquiry here.

In the continuing story of conservative groomer hysteria, the Vigilant Citizens thinks Euphoria is dangerous because of…….. grooming. What else? Jacobin keeps on selling its “socialism is just around the corner” bullshit despite that promise proving to be an utter crock of horseshit for a good seven years now. This time, it’s in the “hopeful” election of Columbian president Gustavo Petro, a libtard who uses half his tweets to kiss the old, wrinkly ass of the worst president in American history, Joe Biden. The most recent efforts in Ukraine propaganda, now that the shine of Zelensky is darkening, is to prop up his wife Olena. Awe, yes, the First Lady of the glorious and hyper-corrupt NATO shell state filled to the gills with Nazi-larping murderers Ukraine. Now, as annoying as all of this is, it’s made all the worse that one of the more interesting living photographers Antoine D’Agata — who made his career photographing himself shooting smack and having unprotected sex with third world prostitutes — has been enlisted by The Guardian to provide visual support to the Olena psyop with his intriguing and well-lit portrait of the First Lady. Makes sense, I guess. I’d be interested in investigating the CIA and intelligence ties of Magnum photographers, given their globe-trotting and extreme expertise at shaping narratives visually.

In another example of Hyperallergic’s absurd lack of self awareness, they hire a fucking Rockefeller to take Jeff Koons to task for the artist deciding to send his sculptures to the moon. The article doesn’t make much of an argument, because ultimately who cares what sculptures are on the moon? And when it does make one, it goes down the usual, well-trodden paths: “Happily for those of us still invested in art’s purpose to interrogate our human condition (and, occasionally, to transcend it), there are many other artists who are concerned with both the concept and the reality of outer space, using it to critically engage with ideas of representation,” writes this insufferable rich kid retard: “It is no surprise that many of the artists grappling with the subject most successfully are women and artists of color.” LMAO! “We will all be saved if we have POC art on the moon,” suggests this inanity. Well, Ms. Rockefeller, no one cares. Jeff Koons has made $100 million and fucked porn stars. You write blogs about space and black people. He wins. I didn’t want to bring this up in the past, but here I go. The alleged downtown NYC “reactionary avant-garde” is an astroturfed farce, and so is its apparent nightlife documentation and “critique” by this blog. For the full extent of my feelings, please refer to Angelicism’s comment at the bottom of the article.

ILLUSTRATIONS:
1. Vito Acconci “Seedbed”
2. Andy Warhol “Eight Elvises”
3. Olena Zelensky by Antoine D’Agata