Objectify This

So, in between waiting for episodes of 30 Rock to download, I got to thinking. Why is it that I so love this TV show about a woman making TV shows, written, produced, directed, and starred in by a Tina Fey, a woman who makes TV shows? Is there perhaps something especially entertaining about entertainment that is borderline reality, and intentionally making fun of reality and entertainment?

Armed with this incredibly original insight, I hit up Youtube, and treated myself to the “what people are watching right now” section, which turns out to be, that’s right, Stick Figures on Crack, (the original and 2 and 3). As I suspected, we love to make fun of ourselves, and not just ourselves, but the way that we make fun of ourselves. With the democratization of pop culture and the means of creating pop culture, we have also created a meta meta meta pop culture that makes fun of the way that our culture makes fun of itself. Andy Warhol is so old school.

Take Stick Figures on Crack, for example, which is merely a review of the various tools of cartoon and slapstick comedy: repetition, unexpected physical violence, etc. The video employs the song “Macarron Chacarron” by El Chombo featuring Andy’s Val Gourmet (which the video incorrectly attributes to an artist called “El Mundo”), which itself is a celebrated parody of music with unintelligible lyrics, most specifically Eminem. And it’s kinda awesome, maybe, the first time you hear it.

This kind of self-mocking, ironic humor has become the only remaining soul of our culture. The idealistic naivite of the flower-power generation and their eventual decline as a cultural movement gave way to a more cynical, worldly-wise youth generation – generation Hipster. Hipsters do not identify as hipsters; hipsters think of themselves as kids devising a method of self-defense for the choice between being a soulless sell-out and a useless slacker. Thus, they are neither wholly idealistic nor wholly cynical, but some kind of self-aware, self-deprecating combination.

Hipsters are consumers, but they prefer not to bow down entirely to corporate dictation, and their clothing is often “alternative” -either self-produced, or imitation-handmade, or produced by small industries, or thrifted from second hand stores, or imitation-thrifted. Retro is ironic; irony is hip; hipness is only cool if it’s not consciously acknowledged. Major corporations (Urban Outfitters, etc.) make mad dollaz catering to this hip/retro/ironic market, but there are also hipper alternatives, such as Married to the Sea and Threadless.com.

Threadless.com (Slogan: “nude no more”) is unique because it allows users to submit ideas for teeshirts and then vote on which ones will be printed into t-shirts, sweatshirts and suchlike.

The company, which my ex introduced me to (thanks, Jake.) , was started by SkinnyCorp, originally a duo of dudes, also named Jake.

The shirts epitomize this ironic, self-deprecating attitude by recycling and subverting cultural symbols, such as the stereotypical ‘warning to kids’, rubix cubes, or the ‘bloods’ gang sign that every white kid growing up in suburbia now learns along with swear words and how babies are made.

My favorite of the Threadless catalog makes fun of Magritte and SuperMario brothers video games. Perhaps it’s good because it employs Magritte’s surrealist messages about the “treachery of images” to illustrate his point again– but it’s certainly also that my stoner friends have made the original image an acknowledgement of their non-acknowledgement of the simultaneous presence and absence of their smoking — which is sometimes accompanied by video games. The plant coming out of the pipe adds another layer of irony, as in Mario and SuperMario the pipe cannot be used to transport your avatar unless the munching plant has ducked down inside of the pipe — so, for Mario, this is not a pipe.